Was hier unter Playducation zu sehen ist, ist jetzt nur ein Blog. Bald wird eine Produktpage entstehen mit einem Shop, wo man unsere Box bestellen kann. Work-in-Progress! Wer sich für mehr interessiert und auf dem Laufenden gehalten werden möchte, kann uns gern eine Mail an info at playducation dot org schicken, wir geben gern Bescheid wenn die neue Page soweit ist. Berliner Kinder und Eltern laden wir auch sehr gern ein zum testen von Quests.  

Da es schon einige Journalisten interessiert hat, was wir da eigentlich machen, und wir uns über die positive Berichterstattung gefreut haben, wollen wir das mit Euch teilen - hier sind die Links:

In Handelsblatt, da war die Bildungsjournalistin Stefani Hergert hinter dem Thema "Neue Lernkultur" und hat auch Stephan Breidenbach interviewt, der im Kanzlerdialog die Expertengruppe "Wie wollen wir lernen" leitet (ich gehöre auch dazu):
http://www.handelsblattmachtschule.de/news/index.php?id=1001&cat=&na=1300

In SAAL ZWEI, einem Onlinemagazin von Stefanie Bilen und Nicole Mai, die Gründerinnen der Working Moms Initiative in Hamburg:
http://www.saalzwei.de/exklusives/artikel/-4b814a41c8/

Wer gar nicht warten kann, bis die Box kommt, kann das Buch von Anke M. Leitzgen bestellen:  "Erforsche Deine Welt". Es zeigt den Geist unserer Quests. Und es ist für den Deutschen Jugendliteraturpreis nominiert!

Warum brauchen wir eine kreative Jugend? Kreativen Menschen „fällt schon was ein“. Sie sind flexiblere und bessere Problemlöser. Der Computerkonzern IBM rechnete im Jahr 2009 aus, dass sich Kreativität positiv auf das gesamte Unternehmen auswirkt: die Bereitschaft zu Veränderungen steigt, Entscheidungen fallen leichter, Probleme werden schneller gelöst.

Dabei sind diese kleinen Wesen namens Kinder voller Kreativität, die Ihnen nicht eingetrichtert werden muss. Sie haben sie schon – Eltern und Schule brauchen sie nur zu fördern und nicht zu ersticken.

Sesamstraße ist überall

Neugier kann wachgehalten werden. Alles lässt sich anfassen, untersuchen, inspizieren. Wie heißen Materialien, woher kommen sie, welche Farbe haben sie im Ursprungszustand? Lässt sich das verformen? Was ist hart, was ist weich? Und warum? Vergessen wir nicht: Antworten gibt’s zuhauf: im Internet. Gewusst wo wird in Zukunft wichtiger als memoriert. Einer der schönsten Sätze, die ein Lehrer oder ein Elternteil sagen kann, twitterte neulich @Herrlarbig: „ich wollte wissen, wie es funktioniert.“ Neugier vorleben macht Kinder selbst neugierig.

Voranscheitern – Fehler machen ist gut

Je entspannter ein Kind Dinge ausprobieren kann und dabei erleben darf, dass Fehler nicht schlimm, sondern Lerngelegenheiten sind, umso kreativer wird es. Je mehr es beim Malen oder Experimentieren erlebt, dass kleckern und matschen, vergeudetes Material oder schlichtweg etwas, das nicht funktioniert, nicht schlimm ist sondern normaler Teil des Experimentierprozesses ist und sogar als Lernfortschritt gewürdigt wird, desto mehr traut es sich, Neues zu denken und zu wagen.

Einverstanden, dass nicht einverstanden

Kreativ ist, wer auch eine andere Meinung hat, zulässt und durchdenkt. Wenn Kinder erleben, dass es unterschiedliche Sichtweisen auf und Herangehensweisen an Lösungsansätze für ein Thema gibt, lernen sie kreativ in Alternativen zu denken.

Spielen, spielen, spielen

Je unbeschwerter Kinder und das Kind in jedem Zeit fürs Spielen hat, desto mehr entwickelt sich die Kreativität. Das schöne am Spielen ist, dass es nicht final ist, dass man immer wieder vom Neuen starten kann, und vor allem das es Spaß macht. Spielen ist der schönste Weg zu Kreativität und Lernen - in und außerhalb der Schule.

Die neue Bildungsaufgabe ist somit: spielerisch Kreativität und andere Fähigkeiten des 21. Jahrhunderts fördern.

* Jahrelang lautete der Claim von Phorms "Wie kleine Menschen große Optimisten bleiben." Ich habe mir erlaubt, es zu zitieren. Denn in Optimusmus steckt eine große Menge Kreativität. Und in Kreativität steckt auch eine große Menge Optimismus. 

Dabei kann Zerstreutheit gerade der Schlüssel sein, wenn eine Lösung her muss. Wussten wir’s doch immer: Die besten Ideen kommen unter der Dusche! Beim Joggen! Draußen im Park! Das haben Wissenschaftler auch schon belegt: Die Professorin Kalina Christoff von der University of British Columbia untersuchte das Phänomen des Tagträumens. Die Gehirnwissenschaftlerin fand heraus, dass sich am Tagträumen auch Gehirnregionen beteiligen, die eigentlich für das Gegenteil zuständig sind, nämlich für das Konzentrieren auf komplizierte Aufgaben. Bisher glaubte man, dass sich die Aktivität beider Netzwerke gegenseitig ausschließt. Mit Hilfe von Messungen und Tests fand Prof. Christoff heraus, dass eine Aktivität, die uns von einem Ziel ablenkt, durchaus uns darauf vorbereiten kann, gleichzeitig etwas anderes zu tun und dies bewusst zu koordinieren. Offensichtlich lösen wir also beim Tagträumen dringendere Probleme als die unmittelbar vorliegenden täglichen Routineaufgaben - möglicher Weise auch unbewusst. Prof. Christoff: "Beim Tagträumen erreichen Sie vielleicht nicht Ihr unmittelbar vorliegendes Ziel - zum Beispiel ein Buch lesen oder im Unterricht aufpassen - aber es kann sein, dass Ihr Gehirn sich diese Zeit nimmt, um sich mit wichtigeren und weitaus komplexeren Fragen zu beschäftigen, wie mit persönlichen Beziehungen oder der eigenen Karriereplanung."

Trotzdem, geht das systematischer? Können wir unser Gehirn in die Dusch-Stimmung nicht auch auf Knopfdruck versetzen, so dass wir auch unmittelbar Problemlösungen produzieren? Ja. Kreativität ist wie ein Muskel, sie lässt sich trainieren und aufbauen. Und wie für Optimismus gilt hier auch: Kinder müssen das nicht lernen, sie müssen nur die Gelegenheit haben, ihre natürlichen Fähigkeiten nicht zu verlernen.

Hier ist eine schöne Übung, ein Kreativitäts-Booster: Kreaturen sehen. Es ist eine Steigerungsform des Spiels „ich sehe etwas, was Du nicht siehst“ mit Formen.

Hintergrund: Gehirne, insbesondere diejenige junger Menschen, besitzen die Fähigkeit, Muster zu erkennen und sich daraus oft einen Reim jenseits der konkreten Realität zu machen. Der Fachbegriff ist „Pareidolie“ (von griechisch para, „daneben, vorbei“, und „eidolon“ = „Bild, Erscheinung“). Das ist keine Krankheit, sondern eben diese Fähigkeit des Gehirns, bei seiner stetigen Suche nach Mustern und Bildern in der Wahrnehmung diese auch selbst in zufälligen Strukturen oder in Sinneseindrücken geringen Informationsgehalts zu finden. Deswegen sehen Kinder (und Kind-gebliebene wie ich) immer Fantasiegestalten in den Wolken, komische Monster im Wald und den Mann im Mond. Genau diese Kreaturen gilt es, sichtbar zu machen. Das ist das ganze Spiel.

Die Anleitung ist einfach:

1. Guckst du! Flecken, Dreck, Unregelmäßigkeiten, Zufälliges, komische Gebilde... finden.
2. Knipst du! Foto schießen. Ausdrucken oder weiter mit dem IPad arbeiten.
3. Mal mal! Wenn das Foto ausgedruckt vorliegt, oder im IPad drin ist, geht der Spaß los: Wie lassen sich die Figuren oder Kreaturen, die in den Motiven drin stecken, zum Leben erwecken? Augen sind das wichtigste. Damit erhalten sie eine Seele. Der Rest kommt dann von alleine. Mund, Schnauze, Zähne, Schnabel, Hände, Flügel, Pfoten, alles kann dazu kommen. Ich bleibe bei dünnen Stricken und Punkten in nur Schwarz, Weiß und Rot, damit die ursprüngliche Struktur noch zu erkennen ist. Aber wie immer bei Kreativität ist alles erlaubt!

Zur Technik: Wenn Ihr Euch für die IPad Kunst entscheidet, empfehle ich als Einsteiger-App „Drawing Pad“. Die ist für Vorschule gedacht und SIMPELST in der Anwendung! Für Fortgeschrittene empfehle ich Brushes, das nutze ich am meisten – da kann man in verschiedene Ebenen malen und auch ganz feine dünne Striche machen. Ein besonderer Gruß an diejenigen, die sich bislang haben schon anstecken lassen - Margret, Lisa und Olde. 

Viel Spaß beim Trainieren des Kreativitätsmuskels!

Und an diejenigen von euch, die es ausprobieren als Eltern, gleich eine Frage: Könnt Ihr euch vorstellen, das Spiel auch mit euren Kindern zu machen? Habt Ihr Lust, das auszuprobieren? Lasst uns über Facebook oder Twitter wissen, wir schicken Euch gern Bildvorlagen und Anregungen. Wir entwickeln eine Idee, die damit zu tun hat, für unsere Juhu-Box und freuen uns über alle, die sie testen wollen.

A note in English that explains the main thought – the rest is art:

„In recent years, scientists have begun to see the act of daydreaming very differently. They’ve demonstrated that daydreaming is a fundamental feature of the human mind – so fundamental, in fact, that it’s often referred to as our “default” mode of thought. Many scientists argue that daydreaming is a crucial tool for creativity, a thought process that allows the brain to make new associations and connections. Instead of focusing on our immediate surroundings the daydreaming mind is free to engage in abstract thought and imaginative ramblings. As a result, we’re able to imagine things that don’t actually exist, like sticky yellow bookmarks.“ (Source: http://www.neurosciencemarketing.com/blog/articles/daydreaming-creativity.htm )

And I would add: like seeing creatures in the flaws of the world!

Viel ist passiert in der letzten Zeit! Nach vielen Tests mit Kindern und Gesprächen mit Eltern, Lehrern und Erziehern, Kinderpsychologen und Gehirnforschern, nach Besuchen auf der Didacta und der Nürnberger Spielwarenmesse ist meiner Partnerin Anke Leitzgen, mir und dem PlayDUcation Team eindeutig klar geworden, dass quest-based Learning früh anfangen muss. Sehr früh. Daher wollen wir mit dem ersten PlayDUcation Produkt Familien mit Kindern ab 3 bis ca. 7 Jahren ansprechen. Unsere Juhu-Box wird besondere Materialien und Experimentieranleitungen sowie liebevolle Geschichten jeden Monat nach Hause bringen. 

In der Tradition des Erfolgsbuches von Anke Leitzgen und Lisa Rienermann „Erforsche deine Welt“ , das kurz vor Weihnachten in einer Auflage von 5000 Stück in 3 Wochen ausverkauft war, entwickeln wir ein PlayDUcation Curriculum, das auf die Multiplen Intelligenzen von Howard Gardner aufbaut und Fähigkeiten schärft, die gutes Lernen und Selbstmotivation fördern.

Wo gilt es "smart" zu sein? Was die Schule klassischerweise abverlangt sind sprachliche und mathematisch-logische Fähigkeiten plus ein Grundverständnis, wie die Umwelt funktioniert.

Hinzu kommen die visuelle Wahrnehmung, Musikalität und Klangdeutung und die Feinmotorik.

Extrem wichtig für eine gute kindliche Entwicklung sind drei weitere Entwicklungsgebiete, die in vielen Schulen zu kurz kommen: Einerseits sich selbst einschätzen zu können und zu reflektieren, andererseits die Beziehung und Interaktion mit anderen. Und bei Stadtkindern bleibt zu oft auch die Grobmotorik auf der Strecke!

Dafür entwickeln wir sogenannte Quests. Das Lernen durch Quests, also durch Erforschen und Entdecken, ist ein bisschen „Reformpädagogik 2.0“: Es geht darum, sich mit eigenen Fragen und Beobachtung an ein Thema anzunähern (Warum fällt alles immer nach unten? Was machen Farben, wenn sie sich vermischen? Warum können Fliegen an der Decke laufen?). Dann gilt es zu überlegen, was passieren könnte – also Hypothesen zu bilden. (Zieht etwas nach unten? Sind Farben kleine Teilchen? Und haben Fliegen Kleber an den Füßen?)

Dann ist das eigentliche Machen, Experimentieren und Erkunden gleich viel einprägsamer und „lehr-reicher“ und vor allem macht das Beobachten und Beschreiben richtig Spaß. Denn das Gehirn ist dabei, Ideen abzugleichen. So entsteht richtig gutes Lernen. Und wenn ein Kind soweit ist, sich dann auch noch mitzuteilen, dann reden wir von Flow und Erfolg.

Wir sind derzeit noch am Testen und Entwickeln – Familien mit Kindern, die gern uns Feedback geben und unsere Quests ausprobieren wollen, sind herzlich willkommen, sich bei uns zu melden:

info@playducation.org und 030-4737 5250. 

Presently we find ourselves in the transition from a book- to an ICT (Information and Communications Technology) culture. According to trend research in sociology and communication sciences this shift may be as radical as the shift resulting from the development of the printing press (accomplishing religious freedom, democracy, school, university, etc.). We have already experienced some of the accomplishments (co-)created through the shift from a book to an ICT-culture through the collapse of the Soviet Union and globalisation (see Manuel Castells).

Education too, will be heavily influenced by this transformation (see reflections on edushift.de).

In the following I have considered how an educational system could be fundamentally designed for the present day and age. My inspiration for this comes from the online-game The West as well as the post-doctoral from Jeanette Böhme „Schule am Ende der Buchkultur“.

Goals

• To truly incorporate the ICT-culture into the educational system
• To prepare children for rapid changes in the future

Measures

• Fusion of formal and informal education respectively making informal education transparent
• Gamification of education
• Real individualization
• Replacing the “Just-in-case” model for the “Just-in-time” (no more memorizing information “on stock”, but developing the competencies to find and learn the needed information, as soon as it is needed)
• Relaxing the divisions between private life/ work-life/ school and child/ adult (lifelong-learning)
• Institutionalisation of the project-method (or project-based-learning PBL) and of learning by teaching

Background

• Children want to independently discover the world to learn. They learn for example by imitating, what adults do.
• The majority of learning occurs on an informal level.  Up until now these skills have only been facilitated on a basic level. A large part of the formal learning is never used and therefore atrophies in memory “All investigations of the knowledge that young people still possess five years after graduating from school lead to devastating results and to the cynical conclusion, that the German school system has a degree of efficiency striving against zero.” (Gerhard Roth, p. 297)
• All students have a unique set of interests, predispositions, talents and style of learning.
• “Learning means answering questions. At conventional schools children continuously undergo answering questions that they themselves did not ask. Hence, they do not learn, respectively they learn for exams only.” (Analogous quotation of a school principal)
• Shifting the leading medium from books to Internet changes the environment. The ICT-culture facilitates individualisation, cooperation and easy publishing and communication. It shifts the necessary predispositions for work-life/ career-life by lending more weight to competencies rather than content.
• 20-25% of the students cannot be schooled anymore (Ben Machmair).

Concept Idea

Students improve their skills and heighten their knowledge by solving quests. A quest could be:

-“Breed sunflowers in a pot.”

-“Cut a piece of sheet-metal and fold the edges to create a pyramid.”

-“Compose an excellent article on Wikipedia.”

-“Program a Facebook application with the following criteria...”

-“Find a hooligan and lead a discussion about his/her motivation.”

-“Play an avatar in World of Warcraft up to level 30.”

Public online platforms analogous to Wikipedia, offer an array of single and group quests. Initially the quests are solved locally; later on they will also be evermore global by cooperating over the Internet. Single quests can also be solved jointly with players solving the same quest (ex: joint pass tour to practice post geography).

The Quest-taker decides by oneself, respectively along with his or her environment, how the quest should be solved. The quest: „Give a 15 minute speech in English“ can be solved by partaking in an English lesson with a teacher onsite or by taking part in a language course in Malta for example. Students receive an e.g. half-year financial budget for solving the quests. An online-map provides locations where work can be done or skills can be trained for quests with specific skill requirements. This could include where workshops teaching sheet-metal work or piano teachers can be found.

If quest-takers are overwhelmed, they are able to take up the services of a coach. For this they receive a half-year budget of coaching-points, which they can top-up by offering to coach other quest-takers.

For every successfully mastered quest points are allocated to specific skills or areas of knowledge. The quest-giver decides how the result / final product is controlled. For example, they may demand an e-portfolio or simply display the final result, i.e. the final result of the programmed Facebook application. Experts control the result by „accepting“ or „rejecting“ it.

As soon as a quest-taker has achieved a certain set of skills and knowledge, they are raised a level. Level status can be required, for example, to offer coaching services, to solve quests from home, or to control the financial-budget by oneself, etc.

The quest-takers can choose quests from a databank, initially through the pre-selection by a coordinator. Depending on the personal set of achieved skill and knowledge points and according to the present level other quests may be recommended by the system. Quest-takers can recommend their own quests and have them approved by an expert.

The quest-databank is open and can be expanded. Experts rate new quests by defining the parameters to start the quest. Mostly coordinators create the quests on the lower levels. On the higher levels quests will come from the private sector, NGOs and higher learning institutions.

Whoever creates a quest, may decide whether the quest is permanently publicly available in the databank or whether it is only available to a select group of quest-takers or whether they are intended to be solved once or multiple times (for example: quests from the private sector). Quests intended to be solved only once are duels: Quest-takers compete amongst each other to be the first to solve the quest. Once the quest is solved it automatically expires.

Ranking lists for skills and knowledge will be publicly available. Quest-takers can decide whether his or her pseudonym will be visible in the ranking list or not. These ranking lists can serve as an additional motivation to gradually work their way up in a skill or knowledge area. Job recruiters can then discover interesting people for recruitment. The transition from school learning period to the career is fluid. The quest-system accompanies its users throughout a lifetime, at first as quest-takers and later mostly as quest-creators and experts.

Overall these are the following roles:

• Quest-takers: solve and master quests
• Coaches: Accompany quest-takers, giving tips, etc., are typically also quest-takers, who have coaching-rights in some areas.
• Teachers: educate quest-takers in return for payment. Quest-takers can select teachers according to their choice. Someone who would like to learn to play piano for example can go to a piano teacher. There are no didactical regulations. Someone who is unsatisfied with any combination of teacher/didactic/price can simply switch teachers.
• Coordinators: coordinate quests, especially on lower levels, may preselect specific quests from a quest-pool, motivate, and deliver ideas etc. Coordinators are the only staff that are employed by an Education board /agency full-time.
• Experts: rate new quests and judge their fulfilment. Anyone who has reached a certain level of points in a specific area and can demonstrate both autonomic and independent work on the rank list can become an expert for this specific field or area.

It is possible to simultaneously be a quest-taker in one area, a coach in another area and an expert in yet another area. Coaching, for example, could be a quest by itself.

Presumably, the quest-system will need a „warm-up“ phase, during which children learn the basic skills and principles and learn a minimum of independence. Forest schools and nurseries may be the appropriate space for individual learning to take place.

Differences in an overview

Remark by Nando Stoecklin: This vision of education is a revised version of my blog publication from the 15.11.2011 and has now been translated into English.

Remark by Béa Beste: All photos are taken by myself during the education expedition. And then I played a little bit around with them. I call this appyart.

I'm not a professional moviemaker. I just took visual notes with my camera, and managed to put some of them together now. I focused on leaders and teachers, who showed me around and shared with me their way of teaching and working together, their beliefs. Unfortunately, I didn't have my camera on all the time, and in addition, even if I had it, I didn't always get an understandable take. So, please consider this collection of quotes to be just some glimpses about how the SCIL team operates and what makes the place so special:

They have a leader with a bold vision: Stephen Harris. See also my previous blog post about the "Big Five of Innovation".

They put the vision at the center of the organization: SCIL is a best practice example of a lean, non-hierarchic structure who empowers each individual to participate and create.

They go out and explore on expeditions: They visit schools and other places of learning and design in the world and they take their inspirations back home and recreate their own. The furniture they develop is stunning - inspired by coffee houses, museums, and lounges. I've learned that they were able to improve the learning outcomes of students with ADHS at a significant amount, just by creating sitting opportunities designed to allow more natural movements and positions of the body.

They have given up walls: When I share photos from SCIL, everybody usually asks: Don't they have a lot of noise and total chaos in these huge spaces? The answer is no. I've spent now lots of time in there, while learning, teaching and all sorts of discovery took place. It's good. It feels open, comfortable, airy, energetic and ... well not quiet. But a lot more quiet as any of us could expect.

They involve students in all learning processes: Basically, SCIL has made the shift from teaching to learning. They empower and involve the students at the very early age in the process of learning, taking the student’s interests and strengths as a starting point. So, the teachers changed their instruction modus from being in total control to being an authentic co-learner, guiding the student’s curiosity and passion.

They walk the talk in their professional development: They plan and execute all professional development in the same way they want the students to learn. So, there is no longer an instructor in front of a staff conference, but they work collaboratively in groups and explore how to make lessons non-traditional. They learn from each other.

They are allowed to make mistakes: There is an atmosphere of no fear at SCIL, but a culture of genuine trust.

They share and connect with the world outside the school: Blogs, Twitter, social media and the use of computer games are integral to learning and teaching.

They are excited about chance: Old school teachers dislike change.  The teachers at SCIL crave for innovation and love to try out new things. I suppose it has a lot to do with the overall culture of trust and no fear.

And finally: Yes, they cover the national curriculum. The students pass the tests, and they score mostly better than the average!

Relationship first

Staff at SCIL seems to be in a constant good mood. Okay, let’s first discount the fact that they are Aussies, having their school in a setting in Terrey Hills that at first glance looks like a holiday resort. But it’s more than that: This school has a Christian background. It's been explained to me that "caring for each other is within the DNA”. They shared these values years before in a “normal” setting with classrooms. Now for the teachers and students working in open spaces (“the Zone”) good, trustworthy and caring relationships are the magic that makes learning there better than before, and the noise level never goes up too much, like it does in normal schools.


Vision in the center

The school’s principal Stephen Harris is often asked to explain the structure of NBCS and SCIL and its organizational chart. Happily he jumps to his Idea Paint wall and starts to draw circles, not the usual pyramids structure. He puts the vision and values of the school in the center and around them the different key players, including him as the master visionary. Stephen thinks that persons and positions are the wheels which give the vision energy. While he perceives himself as a “wheel”, he leads cooperatively without bossing around.

Failure is nothing terrible, it is part of learning

We came to test some playDUcation missions and quests. This School is already highly gamified! Steve Collins explained and showed me how the school makes time for students to play Minecraft online, in earlier times they used to go to Second Life. Playing games and reflecting on their strategies, collaboration and outcomes contributes to learning.

With Lou Deibe’s 5th grade class we found wonderful special agents with very special skills to solve a special secret task connected to a great woman pharaoh of Ancient Egypt. The smartness, perseverance and collaboration skills of the designated teams were stunning! They took each challenge with joy and curiosity. They solved all tasks, and we had a great time. It did not feel like learning. Their motivation was stunning - during the last days of school after all tests had been taken.

But the most surprising and amazing test result we had was with a group of ten students Mark Burgess picked from 8th grade. We gave them a very hard task: They became game designers and their mission was to reconstruct a lost board game that people used to play to understand Ancient Egypt.  We actually didn’t think it would work, but Mark encouraged us to try. He said that SCIL had a culture of “safe failing”. And because we all tried, we got the most amazing output ever: The two teams of students worked voluntary at home until late at night and came up with complete board games with great solutions for the game’s strategy and extremely creative designs!

A quick conversation with one of the daughters of the hosts where we stayed, who is a students at NBCS, summed it all up. Kimberly said, “It’s a culture of trust. Teachers trust us as kids; they trust in our potential, and this makes us works harder. Because if I feel trust, I don’t want to disappoint.”

While there is so much talk about integration, this school lives it. I met Daniel, a 15-year-old boy who goes miles beyond his learning (despite being in a wheelchair and fighting the dis-coordination of his body) to save the orangutans in Borneo. He’s raised more than $ 600.000 and now goes for the million. I meet so many examples where trust and caring have changed trajectories, discovered potential instead of sorting out people.


After this second visit I trust even more that this school and its core, the Sidney Center for Innovation in Learning, SCIL, are going to continue to inspire and create the future of education with more engaged young people, happier teachers, stronger values and culture, improved learning and better results. Way to go.

Das BizCamp ist von Anfang so geplant, dass es bewusst ein Mix von sozialen Hintergründen ist. Ein Teil der Schüler ist sozial stärker gefördert, ein weiterer Teil ist begabt mit Migrationshintergrund, kann aber durch seine Eltern nicht gefördert werden. Der dritte Teil betrifft benachteiligte Jugendliche mit und ohne Migrationshintergrund aus sozialen Brennpunkten. Es kommen also Gymnasiasten aus gutem Elternhaus und Schüler aus Brennpunktgebieten die zur Realschule gehen. Ziel ist, dass sie lernen, sich gegenseitig zu unterstützen und aufeinander zuzugehen. Sie sollen die Welt der Anderen kennen und schätzen lernen, damit auch im Alltag ein gegenseitiger Respekt entsteht.

Angeboten wird das BizCamp durch NFTE Deutschland e.V. In Frankfurt steht maßgeblich die Xchanging Transaction Bank als Sponsor hinter dem Konzept. Die Start Stiftung rekrutiert einige Teilnehmer bei ihren Stipendiaten.

Wie funktioniert das BizCamp?

Die meisten Schüler besuchen das Camp in ihren Ferien. Das arbeitsintensive 6-tägige Programm geht morgens los und endet gegen 17 Uhr, danach gibt es ein Freizeitangebot.

Fünf Tage erarbeiten die Schüler eine eigene Geschäftsidee, die auf ihren persönlichen Interessen und Fähigkeiten beruht. Ein Weg ist, dass wir mit ihnen schauen, ob sie aus ihren Hobbys und Fähigkeiten ein Produkt oder eine Dienstleistung entwickeln können. Ein anderer Weg ist, dass sie sich fragen, was einen total stört und was man unbedingt ändern will.

Die passende Geschäftsidee zu finden ist nicht immer leicht, außerdem sind die Schüler sehr unter Zeitdruck. Ein schönes Erlebnis war, wie eine Schülerin mit zerrauften Haaren am 3. Tag während der Kaffeepause plötzlich strahlend und erleichtert ruft: “Jaaa! Ich habe meine Idee gefunden, endlich weiß ich, was ich will!” Sie war so überzeugt von ihrer Idee, dass sie sich für den NFTE Bundesevent ‘Schülerpreis für Unternehmergeist’ beworben hat und mit der höchsten deutschen Auszeichnung ‘NFTE Schülerin des Jahres’ prämiert wurde.

Am letzten Tag des BizCamp präsentieren die Schüler ihren Businessplan vor einer Wirtschaftsjury. Die Aufregung ist groß und in der Nacht vor der Präsentation wird wenig geschlafen. Bis weit nach Mitternacht feilen sie an ihren Ideen und Businessplänen und machen Generalproben.

Was passiert in einem NFTE Biz Camp, was in der Schule nicht passiert?

Die Schüler arbeiten freiwillig bemerkenswert länger als in der Schule, weil sie an etwas arbeiten, was sie wirklich ganz persönlich interessiert. Obwohl am Ende ein Wettbewerb steht ist es sehr beeindruckend, wie intensiv sie sichauch gegenseitig bei ihrer Ideenentwicklung beraten und sie sich in die Ideen der anderen hineinversetzen.

Was waren die spannendsten Ideen, die die Teilnehmer entwickelt haben?

Dazu zählen für mich: Safran-Import aus dem Iran, selbstgebaute Kugelschreiber für den amerikanischen Trend „pen-spinning“, ein Fußballverein für Dicke, Kamelmilch aus Ägypten, ein Messer welches die Vorzüge von Stahl und Keramik kombiniert, ein Buchumschlag aus Baumwolle und ein Navigationssystem für Zuhause.

Geht das noch als Ferienbeschäftigung durch oder ist es harte Arbeit für die Teilnehmer? Wo liegt der Spaßfaktor?

Es ist eher harte Arbeit, die aber irgendwann nicht mehr als solche empfunden wird, eben weil sie Spaß macht – das klassische Phänomen eines Entrepreneurs. Der Spaßfaktor kommt aber auch nicht zur kurz! Mit Ausflügen z.B. auf den Maintower und einem Kochevent zum Start! Und natürlich Zeit zum Shoppen.

Was hat Euch überrascht?

Eigentlich ist es schon nicht mehr überraschend, aber jedes Mal dann doch wieder, dass wirklich jeder der Teilnehmer eine eigene Geschäftsidee entwickelt. Es überrascht immer wieder wie die Unterschiede der Jugendlichen nach ein paar Stunden verschwinden und sich eine tolle Gruppe formt!

Vielen Dank Kyra und Florian für dieses Interview!

Als ich am Tag der Präsentationen dazu kam, habe ich in einer Pause spontan die Teilnehmer gebeten, kurz auf einem Flip Chart die Frage zu beantworten: "Was hat das Biz Camp für mich verändert?" - hier sind die Antworten!

„Ich habe mich selbst überrascht!“ – Dennis

„Ich habe in der Woche sehr viel für meine Zukunft gelernt.“ Philipp

„Ich habe gelernt, wie viel Arbeit es ist, ein Unternehmen zu gründen.“ Marie

„Ich habe gelernt, dass man aus jedem Menschen etwas rausholen kann.“

„Ich habe gelernt, Ideen und Visionen umzusetzen.“ Peter

„Ich habe gelernt, meine Ideen durch zu setzen.“ Isabella

„Durch NFTE bin ich meiner Idee ein Stückchen näher gekommen.“ Inna

„Ich hab viel Neues über mich gelernt.“ Angelina

„Durch NFTE habe ich einen Einblick ins Unternehmertum bekommen.“ Sahra

„Ich habe unternehmerisch zu denken gelernt.“ Michael

Warum ich Lehrerin werden will? Ich bin kommunikativ, neugierig, kreativ und arbeite gern mit Menschen, v.a. mit Kindern und Jugendlichen. Ich habe Praktika im Kindergarten gemacht, war Babysitter und AuPair. Ich finde es einfach faszinierend zu sehen, wie sich Kids entwickeln. Ich will einen Teil dazu beitragen, dass sie Spaß am Lernen haben und sich das angestaubte Bild von Schule ändert. Ich bin überzeugt davon, dass wenn man an seine Schüler glaubt und sie unterstützt, viel möglich ist.

Was ist der Schwerpunkt Deines Studiums?

Der Schwerpunkt meines Studiums liegt auf den Fachwissenschaften, in meinem Fall Englisch und Geographie. Erziehungswissenschaften/Pädagogik und Didaktik spielen eine eher untergeordnete Rolle. In Zahlen ausgedrückt muss ich: jeweils 100 Credits in den zwei Fachwissenschaften Geographie und Englisch nachweisen, dazu kommen 20 Credits für die Staatsexamensarbeit, jeweils 20 Credits in den Fachdidaktiken (Geo + Engl) und 40 Credits in den Erziehungswissenschaften.

Wie erlebst du die Lehrerausbildung insgesamt?

Ich erlebe die Lehrerbildung als zu verschult und praxisfern. Ich habe das Gefühl, dass ich den Großteil dessen, was ich in der Uni lerne, nicht in der Schule anwenden kann. Auf der anderen Seite scheint es, als ob die wirklich wichtigen Dinge nicht angesprochen werden. Niemand sagt mir z.B. wie ich mit schwierigen Schülern umgehe, wie ein sinnvolles Classroom Management aussehen kann oder wie schülerzentrierter Unterricht wirklich gelingt. Ich kann nur für meine persönliche Erfahrung sprechen, aber die Erziehungswissenschaften sind ein Graus: überfüllte Veranstaltungen, unbesetzte Lehrstühle und überforderte Dozenten tragen nicht unbedingt zu unserer pädagogischen Expertise bei.

Was sind die Höhepunkte in deinem Studiums?

Ein Höhepunkt ist der Zusammenhalt zwischen den Studenten. Ich habe außerdem das Glück gehabt, im Laufe des Studiums viel Praxiserfahrung sammeln zu können. Zum einen durch ein integriertes Praxissemester, was ich an einer International School gemacht habe, und zum anderen durch ein Stipendium für ein Urlaubssemester, durch das ich die wundervolle Riverside School in Ahmedabad, Indien kennengelernt habe. Diese beiden Schulen, die man wohl als eher unkonventionell bezeichnet könnte, haben mir die Augen für innovative Ansätze in der Bildung geöffnet.

Was war der Tiefpunkt?

Tiefpunkte gibt es immer wieder. Wir waren 2007 der erste Jahrgang, der ein neues Lehramtsmodell angefangen hat. Es wurde viel versprochen und wenig gehalten. Wir waren und sind quasi die Versuchskaninchen und müssen die Kinderkrankheiten beseitigen. Da wir immer die Ersten sind, die alles praktisch durchlaufen, was vorher nur theoretisch auf dem Papier existierte, gibt es immer wieder Konflikte und Unstimmigkeiten. Wenn man dann allzu oft hört: „Das nächste Mal machen wir es anders“ und für uns konkret eben meistens keine Änderungen ersichtlich sind, frustriert das auf Dauer ganz schön.

Welche Erfahrungen hast du außerhalb der Uni gesammelt?

Wie schon erwähnt, habe ich an zwei innovativen Schulen gearbeitet. Außerdem habe ich ein Praktikum bei PlayDUcation gemacht. Ich halte die Augen und Ohren offen, babysitte, hatte diverse Nebenjobs, reise viel, lerne verschiedenste Menschen kennen und lasse mich inspirieren. Ich habe auch festgestellt, dass Dinge, die eigentlich vordergründig nichts mit meinem Studium zu tun haben sehr bereichernd sein können. Den Blickwinkel zu wechseln tut manchmal gut.

Wenn du die deutsche Lehrerbildung an einer spezifischen Stelle ändern könntest: Was würdest du tun? Was würdest du sein lassen?

Ein Studium, was wirklich auf den Beruf vorbereitet und nicht nur so tut, wäre super. Dazu gehört meiner Meinung nach u.a. inhaltlich rigoros auszumisten, mehr Praxisbezug zu schaffen, nicht alles im Seminarraum theoretisch abzuhandeln, sondern raus zu gehen und zu schauen, externe Leute mit frischen Ideen einzubinden, mehr Möglichkeiten aufzuzeigen (auch außerhalb der klassischen Schullaufbahn), Dozenten zu entlasten und didaktisch zu schulen, mehr Transparenz und Mitspracherecht zu schaffen, Bürokratieabbau und bessere Kommunikation.

Have a broad and radical vision, big enough to engage every person

Together with many educational visionaries around the world, both Stephen and I share the vision that in probably 20 years from now, schools are not going to exist anymore in the traditional style. We envisage co-learning spaces in the midst of communities, where people from different ages and interests come to take part in learning labs. Or we imagine how groups of active learners sharing a special interest, go straight out of those places to explore. Stephen is driven by the conviction that environments can change attitudes and behaviors, and he is an architect by heart and a furniture designer by passion. He is permanently scanning his surroundings for new ways to create learning spaces in which children could follow their natural ways to move, to sit, to put their bodies in a position that fosters learning. The success can be seen in NBCS – Kids with ADHD can focus better in the refurbished classrooms and open spaces created by Stephen and his SCIL team.

Create deep and true engagement

Don’t think this is just paying lip service. I’ve been to Stephen's school and I’ve seen how he inspires and fascinates his staff and students. He makes them laugh. Lets them play. Lets them lead. And then again, they do the same with each other. “Empower” is the motto. His staff gave me the impression to be the most supportive and happy bunch of teachers I’ve ever seen in a place – and I say this with admiration and whishing I could have created such an outstanding atmosphere at Phorms (and Phorms already has a great atmosphere).

Stephen told me about a student who kind of harassed a teacher with a picture on Facebook – something that may have led to being expelled in another school. Of course they had a serious word with him. But they have recognized that the kid had an interest in photography and PR, and they’ve trained and allowed him to become a school photographer. By seriously getting his mind wrapped around what real photography needs, the urge to get nonsense on Facebook decreased gradually…

We spoke about what the characteristics of good teachers are. Stephen’s great credo is authenticity, and he believes that good teachers should also do what they are in charge of – a physics teacher should research, an arts teacher should paint and an English teacher should write novels or poems.

Aim high and be a risk taker, have the guts to resist given rules, routines, and cannots

That’s the hardest. That’s where I started to envy Stephen for the Australian culture. We spoke a lot about being a changemaker in Germany, trying to push innovation in the culture of “Bedenken” - concerns. It’s hard, but not impossible – those who really want, do it, in the most unexpected places. Like at the Erika-Mann-Grundschule, about whom we’ve learned from an Australian Design Collection homepage, the CoolHunter. We did not even make an appointment, we just dropped in, expecting to be sent away but maybe get a glace at the colorful corridors before… We’ve entered the Sekretariat and in a whim we had in front of us the headmaster Karin Babbe, full of curiosity and good mood, who proudly gave us a tour (I’ll follow up with a new blog post, this school is a highly playDUcative place!). In this school, creativity created an exceptional learning atmosphere despite the challenges of a school population with more than 80% unemployed parents.

Remove the timetable – invent new creative structures

The processes of learning at SCIL and NBCS stroke me to be extraordinarily effective. During a dinner on Monday evening, Steve explained to our team and our guests how he changed the whole notion of delivering the curriculum into a true learning process. I’ve seen the SCIL matrix working – it’s a project-based learning approach related to the subjects of the curriculum on one hand, and on the other one to Gardner’s intelligences. Inside the matrix, there are multiple tasks that kids can accomplish, developing so a broader and deeper understanding of their own strengths and capacities. It’s a true highlight to hear from a fourth grader something like: “I know that I’m a visual and kinesthetic person and therefore good at maths and art. I’m now working on my literacy skills and want to become a better listener.” And it is purely amazing to observe more than 160 teenagers in one big space, having no discipline issues whatsoever and being deeply engaged in their learning.

Stephen's vision goes even beyond this. He believes that schools should also follow the Google 80:20 rule, and give each teacher the opportunity to do in at least 20% of the time with their students whatever their passion is.

Make teamwork, collaboration, and relationship building a habit

Last but not least, this is a favorite subject – not only for learning, but also for work and life. Everything comes easier if we do it together. That’s our nature as human beings. Why should anyone sit alone in exams and squeeze his memory? That’s not an authentic situation. Learners need to be able to research, to filter knowledge, to ask around and discuss.

Building relationships will be a key success skill for the future. Stephen’s recipe for this ties in with his whole visit in Berlin: Tear down walls! He means this physically. Who needs classrooms in boxes? Team teaching comes with transparency, open spaces, visibility and openness. We walked through spaces like the Stilwerk or concept stores and agreed that learning spaces of the future could be like this. We didn’t ever say schools anymore. And I felt extraordinarily happy when Stephen said: “playDUcative places”.

The growing pressure to transform an entire system creates a huge challenge for us and naturally also a lot of angst with its participants. It’s not just for individuals within the system to learn new, we need the whole system to shift & learn. Nobody really knows how to do that. In a way all of us need to go on an expedition. And that makes a lot of people feel helpless, clueless, even ängstlich. Teachers and other educators particularly don’t like being clueless, as their traditional role is to be in the know and to impart knowledge. Thus we have such a hard time introducing these devices into the classroom. One either suspects that they will have unforeseen consequences that you won’t be able to control. Or it doesn’t make any sense to introduce them into a system that is thought to be rigid and thus far has been working without them.

With this mind it’s no wonder that it’s the hefty Interactive White Board (IWB) of all devices that has been allowed to conquer the classroom, even before students have been allowed to bring their own devices. The reason for this is simple: A classroom with an interactive whiteboard doesn’t differ much from one with a blackboard. The teacher stays upfront and in the focus, with all students looking forward, instead of communicating with each other or learning individually. You can’t create digital-age learning settings by simply putting an interactive whiteboard into the same-old classroom.

What are your highlights when you work with teachers?
It’s a highlight for me when teachers suddenly realize they learned something by and for themselves, not just for next class tomorrow. When they’re jubiliantly learning with joy, by making discoveries that have personal meaning to themselves. One group of teachers just didn’t want to call it a day, even after we’ve had already prolonged our PD by over an hour. Teachers aren’t used to learn for themselves anymore. It goes to show how crazy our traditional system is, where it is said: “I’m done learning, now it is for others to learn.”
Another personal highlight for me is to encounter often young teachers who enter my seminars with low expectations: “What’s that old lady going to teach me anyway?”

Teachers are hardly ever asked what they already know and can do, what experiences they bring, which problems they woud like to tackle. Such low expecitions were set in their teacher education courses in university and more traditional professsional development settings. In my seminars they’re suddenly wide-awake when I ask for their learning desires by having them fill in an Etherpad for instance. Neither do they know this digital tool nor have they been expecting to all say what they want, at the same time. And that the seminar is then actually tailored to their learning desires. It’s always funny for me to see their positively-disappointed faces.


What has been a lowpoint?
Low points occur when I’m not able to muster enough empathy and patience with teachers. In this case it’s often with older ones, who are frightened of all the sudden new demands and react by turning passive-aggressive. I had one arts teachers who just like his colleagues was expected to learn how to blog, but he just sat in front of his PC with folded arms and kept repeating: “I’m not doing a thing.”
I asked if he’s into photography and perhaps would like to create a photo album on flickr, so that his students… At this point he got mad. All for me to do was leave him alone. Mayhaps this at least gave him a taste of what it feels like for students when they’re being forced to learn something.

Can you give us an example of best practice in teacher use of digital technology?
I think the best paedagogic use of digital tools in school is the same way they’re being used in society: As an interactive information and communication medium. For the first time in paedagogic history we have such simple ways of organizing the most important aspects of learning, namely internalization, externalization, individualization and collaboration. Good practice for me is to use blogging for the collaborative collection of material, to discuss problems and to show results. They pretty works in all subjects, I’ve even seen a successful implementation in sports.
It requires being ready to open the learning process design in a way that students can work on a complex topic in a self-directed and open-ended manner. I’m currently working on the complex issue of migration and integration with a teacher named Max and his 12th grade. Max and I have been planning the project setting, he’s now entered it with his class, and I am coaching him. After intitial hesitation his students quickly caught fire and are now working this way with great enthusiasm. It’s a quite simple recipe really: They work on what they deem important and what’s meaningful for them. Very indvidualized, but also collaborative. None of us knows what’s going to be the exact outcome, but it’s already clear that we will see interesting results and that students are learning a lot.

If you were to change how German teachers are educated: What’s one single thing you would introduce? What one thing we would stop doing?
I’m sceptical if changing a single thing can help change a system. It’s the nature of system change, that nearly everything belonging to the system is changing at the same time. But one ought not to criticize the make-a-wish fairy:
If I were to change one thing in teacher education, I’d shift the main learning style to self-directed, project-based learning with experiments and expeditions.
What I’d stop is that teachers have to study two subjects. Pursuing one passion and finding their element, as Sir Ken Robinson calls it, is enough. To be thrilled about their subject and to become experts in it they have to be practicing for thousands of hours. The time you free by not having to study a second subject could be used for them to begin to learn what learning means in the 21st century and how to become a moderator and coach of learning processes for students today.

When you study where good ideas come from, it’s clear as soup that such diversity plays a lead role in creating breakthrough innovation. But by which mechanism? You can simply throw a diverse team together, heat things up, stir and sizzle; hoping you’ll get tasty startup soup. We, however, swear by a different recipe: Your allstar team gets even better by inspiring itself through sharing outer-ordinary playDUcative experiences.

Staying true to our Mach das mal mantra, we are off to create those experiences. Last month, we began exploring Berlin's most playDUcative places with a visit to the Computer Games Museum. Now we're stepping things up and walk further back in our childhood. Find the giraffe at Potsdamer Platz and enter the LEGO® Discovery Centre.

First Impressions

There are a few families around, but our field research soon uncovers that the real target audience of this place are coltish adults with a token child. With our youngest playDU-er Susann being 24, even she doesn't go by. Our cover is blown: We're going to stand out as unsupervised adults in a child-centered environment. To be frank, we really feel a bit lost at first. Arriving in the main hall downstairs, we keep safe proximity to the elevator. Arms folded, thumbs twiddling, we're unsure what to do.

LEGO®-fied classroom

A few feet away, a familiar sight: A fairly traditional classroom setting with guided instruction. What I take to be a certified LEGO® teacher stands in front of a class and gives them a rundown of the official LEGO® nomenclature. No more calling it the clippy bit, what a bummer! The parent-kiddo pairs sit and listen while we stand in the back, observing. Soon the teacher asks: “Would the oldish children like to join?” Shaking our heads we slowly back out of his class. We didn’t come here for learning the old way.

Exploring The Factory

Soon we find ourselves standing in front of closed doors. Above them this sign: LEGO® factory. A monitor with a countdown: Five minutes left! Tick tock. Then the doors swing open, revealing a room about as big as our office. Instead of EasyFlip foils full of ideas, here you find plenty of weird devices covering the walls. Their purpose? Mysterious.

When the doors finally open, we're welcomed by a cheerful guide in a white lab coat. Pretending to be a LEGO® factory technician, he's about to reveal how these famed bricks are made. Leading our little learning group clockwise around the room, he talks us through the entire process and explains what each of these odd machines is for.

Linear Learning Model

Let me reveal their trade secret: The process starts by taking LEGO® granule—nontoxic he remarks—and stirring it. You warm it up til it becomes all gooey LEGO® and finally melts into LEGO® liquid. Cool it down in a LEGO® form to make-and-bake the LEGO® brick you desire. You may even slam a LEGO® sticker on it. Bäääm!

Viewed through our teacher lens: Even though the instructor picks one of us to push a satisfyingly large button at each station, there's no real interaction here. Much like in German Ostereierpädagogik (easter-egg pedagogy) we cannot stray off his pre-ordained path. Le sigh. Up to this point it's all been a bit disappointing: We entered the LEGO® Discovery Centre and seem to have found a linear learning factory. Time to move on…

Now They Get To Us

Two huge ramps are the next attraction. There's a slew of children buzzing around them, running back and forth between ramps and workbench. Each kid is building, testing, perfecting their little LEGO® racer and engages in cheerful competition. The first ramp invites to a simple soapbox derby: Press a button and up to four carts roll down an inclined plane. Picking up speed they go down the hill, first through the gate is the winner.

Crossing The Chasm

Second ramp is a whole other thrill: Steep downhill slope, jump table, chasm, second jump table. Woah! I found my mekka. It's fun to see the kids try and fail, feeling fiero. We enter the fray, secretly feeling: “Sure I can build a better car than those children!” Heh smartypants, what little you know. From observing others it doesn't appear to be rocket science, but man what a killjoy when your car breaks apart.

Your Brain Runs On Fun!

All in all, this was a real trip back to our childhood: First feeling frustrated in the classroom setting, then strolling around til we found what we love. Most learning didn't happen where there was most teaching, rather when we were free to play.

Derzeit entwickeln wir schnitzeljagdähnliche Lernabenteuer, die sich an Kinder und Jugendliche im Alter ab 10 Jahren richten und nach der Schule bzw. in den Ferien stattfinden werden. Dabei kommen kleine Gruppen von Jugendlichen zusammen, um sorgfältig angeleitet sogenannte „Quests“ – spielerische Missionen – zu lösen. Die Quests trainieren sowohl mathematische und sprachliche Fähigkeiten, als auch Lösungskompetenz, Zeitmanagement, Teamfähigkeit, Effizienz und Effektivität sowie Medienkompetenz. Und vor allem: Die Teilnehmer lernen etwas über sich selbst, wie sie mit Spaß Probleme lösen können.

Neulich konnten wir einen ersten dieser Quests mit Kindern testen. Nach einem kurzen Aufwärmen im Stil von „pictionary“ begaben sich die engagierten Tester auf der Suche nach der eigentlichen Aufgabe, die sich in einer versteckten Botschaft befand. Gute Kombinationsfähigkeiten und spionenartige Aufmerksamkeit verhalfen dazu sehr, die Botschaft zu finden und zu dekodieren.

Diese Aufgabe war, sich in die Rolle von Architekten zu begeben und im Team ein „Superhelden Trainingszentrum“ zu entwerfen. Anschließend mussten sie ihren Entwurf per Telefon an die Bauleiterin Whitney übermitteln: Eine Team-Herausforderung, bei der präziser Kommunikation, Einhaltung von Zeitvorgaben und strategisches Vorgehen wichtig war, und zu der unsere fantasievollen Architekten mit Feuereifer und viel Kreativität zur Tat geschritten sind. Trotz einigen Überraschungen, die wir an dieser Stelle nicht verraten, damit der Quest auch für andere spannend bleibt, hat unser Team ein hervorragendes Ergebnis erzielt und trotz jeder Menge Kopfzerbrechen viel Spaß gehabt!

Sehr beeindruckt waren wir von der Reflektionfähigkeit unserer Tester, die anschließend ihre Vorgehensweise zusammen mit Bauleiterin Whitney revidierten: Sie brachten ihre Lern- und Teamerfahrungen auf dem Punkt und zogen daraus Schlüsse, die auch in ihrem Schulalltag noch nützlich sein werden.

Im Laufe der nächsten Wochen werden wir immer wieder Quests mit Kindern und Jugendliche testen. Wir suchen noch Kinder und Jugendliche im Alter ab 10 Jahren ahren, die in Berlin wohnen und Lust haben, sich für ca. 2 Stunden auf Lernabenteuer zu begeben. Die Teilnahme ist kostenlos: 

NEU: Samstag 24 September von 11:00 bis ca 13:30 neuer Quest für 15- bis 17jährige!

Bei Interesse wenden Sie sich bitte an uns, am besten schicken Sie uns eine kurze Mail an info@playducation.org.
Bitte Name und Alter des Teilnehmers, den Terminwunsch und Kontaktdaten angeben. Wir rufen Sie gern zurück und freuen uns sehr über Ihr Interesse! Oder Sie rufen uns an: 030 - 84 72 55 70.

Basti: It took about 10 minutes from sitting down to try an engaging game until I had that familar feeling again: “Don't interrupt me, I just need to beat this one level!” StarCraft II was part of the temporary exhibition at the Berlin Computer Games Museum and it helped me relearn how instantly addictive a great game can be.

Susann: Even though I wouldn’t consider myself a big gamer, I did enjoy playing around and exploring the world of computer games. It's simply amazing how much the technology advanced and with it the range of computer games. It's incredible to see how these different games attract all kinds of people and how engaging it can be to fully immerse oneself in this unique universe of opportunities.

Karin: If someone asked me what fascinated me most about our visit to the Computer Games Museum I wouldn't say that it was playing around with the Nintendo DS right away. The picture above proves differently. The fascination in Basti's and my eyes reminds me that I very quickly felt drawn into the game without even knowing how it worked when I began playing. If one could transfer the formula of “getting into a thing very quickly and not wanting to stop until you've figured out how to win” to learning—today's schools would look very different.

Béa: This is how my first computer and gaming experience really looked like, back in the early 90es! So much has changed, so much fun and color has been added. Why do most schools still look and feel the same? Let's get the spirit, the speed, the joy of gaming and put it into learning!

Peter: Although the design of 1980s arcade games is very basic, I was suddenly riveted by this game. I was fighting against a giant space insect on a coin-slot machine. The insect always won, however, I still have not given up. The battle now continues on my laptop.

Kaoru Wang is a young Chinese-Japanese-American filmmaker. Til Tuesday she was playDUcation’s guest here in Berlin, searching for The Killer App that could transform education. With her camera and thorny questions she helped us see how we’re really playing against Prussia.

Kaoru and I got to know each other last spring, when I went on a five-week education expedition across the United States. Her and her Chinese mom were so kind to host me at their place in Germantown while I was in NYC, so I was eager to return the favor when I heard she was coming to Germany.

Order and Punctuality

“If you want to understand the origins of our public education system, you have to go to Prussia!”, John Taylor Gatto had told our filmmaker friend in New York. Prussia of course doesn’t exist anymore, but plenty of its remnants can still be found in Berlin.

It is more than just Prussian palaces, paintings and porcelain on display in museums though: For one there’s Germans famed sense of punctuality, which some consider to date back to the precise movements of Prussian regiments. To be on time all the time is even said to be one of the Preußische Sekundärtugenden, a Prussian virtue.

More important for Kaoru’s quest for Education for the YouTube Generation and everyone else working in education: Many of the design decisions from the original Prussian public education system can still be found in classrooms today.

Education History 101

Lets start with the idea of kindergarten. It’s a German word for an educational innovation that started spreading around the world since 1840. Friedrich Fröbel coined the term–literally meaning children’s garden–to describe the Play and Activity Institute he had founded three years prior.

Fröbel’s breakthrough idea was that early childhood is a time to grow and to learn. Kindergarten should not just be an Aufbewahrungsanstalt, a place were children are put on hold until they’re older, but rather a Bildungseinrichtung, an institution for playful learning and discovery.

Germany’s second successful educational export is the Humboldtian research university, with its unity of teaching and research. The notion that professor and students should see each other eye-to-eye, that between them there should develop a dialogue of equals is perhaps best realized in the seminars of American liberal arts colleges.

Wilhelm von Humboldt and Friedrich Fröbel were both ahead of their times. Many of their far-reaching ideas were not implemented in Germany. How much Bildung fits into Kindergarten is a question that is still debated today.

A Legacy of Inequality

Worse than forgetting Prussia’s most progressive educational ideas is an obliviousness of its darker legacy. Most people then believed that there is a tiny elite of citizens who are destined to fulfill a higher purpose, and many commons who are working on the fields.

Even as access to education was expanded and elementary school became compulsory, only “a little read and write” was expected of most kids. One assumed that lower-class children couldn’t master higher-order thinking, that too much of an education would be wasted on them, even dangerous.

Unfortunately part of this legacy persists: After elementary school at the age of ten, in most German school systems children are sorted into a three-tiered secondary school system. The college-track Gymnasium is the higher level, Realschule is the name of the general track, Hauptschule is the lowest level.

It is reasoned that children who have proved to be weak learners by the end of forth grade will not be able to perform well in Gymnasium and beyond. Their talent is said to lie on the more practical, hands-on learning, that they’re destined for blue-collar jobs and should thus start preparing for those in the Hauptschule.

Homogenous Learning Groups

Who had the ridiculous idea of sorting kids according to three distinct talents at the age of ten? It results from a school system of an unequal society. The Prussians famously ran a well-oiled bureaucracy, one in which every citizen was put in their place.

What persists is an almost military tradition: By sorting and separating children according to their talents our school system attempts to created homogenous learning groups. Teachers can then order knowledge into children's’ heads, the kids are marching in lockstep through the curriculum.

The Way Ahead

Yet even the German military knows marching in lockstep isn’t appropriate in every situation. When crossing a bridge troops are often ordered to break formation. The soldiers’ synchronized steps may otherwise happen to resonate and amplify until the bridge disintegrates; a whole platoon and the way ahead lost.

It is much easier to coordinate our legs than it is to coordinate our thoughts. Thankfully so! Who knows whether a ten-year old child will turn out to be the next Albert Einstein or Angela Merkel?

Can we end this silliness of expecting children to learn in lockstep? More educational equality and individualized learning could be the first steps in creating a Killer App that allows us to cross the bridge.

Picture of Humboldt University CC BY-NC-ND by user jaywaykay on flickr. Blogpost inspired by Kaoru Wang and her interview with education journalist Christian Füller, who blogged about Kaoru's visit in German.

Thank you John Chen for the pictures - and most of all, for an unforgettable experience. John is the founder and CEO of Geoteaming (on the photo: the guy in green).

Now imagine another situation: Fully interested in the students' potential and working in a quite different school system, a teacher is able to see all their students as changemakers and supports their learning and development with that goal. An idiom they might use when seeing an entrepreneurial talent: “Get up, start up!”

Last weekend playDUcation hosted an education brunch with a thematic focus on entrepreneurship. We invited school leaders, social entrepreneurs, startup founders, and a diverse group of friends to sit around our table and share brunch with us. New friends were made, and for four hours we talked about little else but about education as entrepreneurship.

Our basic premise was that a child’s way of seeing the world, of questioning, conquering is similar to that of an entrepreneur. Both approach the existing reality with a sense of wonder: Why is this so and not different?

Entrepreneurs question why certain needs are not met. They ask why some products are so pricy. They imagine new uses, new markets, a new world. Children too have a great sense of imagination. Schumpeter described entrepreneurial activity as acts of creative destruction. It’s a term that surely resonates with the experience of most parents.

Yet many children lose their innate initiative as they get older. As they finish or drop out of their education, a lot of our youth feel exactly the same as Dave and his friends in the video below: helpless, frustrated, and with a lack of perspective. How can educators develop entrepreneurial talent, rather than bury it?

We think the problem lies with teachers. There are of course those with an entrepreneurial streak, but the majority chose their profession because they don’t have it. They desired a stable job, eschewed the uncertainties of the market. Most of them finished school, went to university, and then returned back to school. The educational environment is where they feel most comfortable.

This is fine, of course, however not very entrepreneurial. And it’s quite different from the projected careers of our youth, were changing jobs and switching industries will become ever more widespread. So when the typical educator talks about entrepreneurship, there is a strange disconnect.

The solution: Bake sales?

Entrepreneurial activity still has a place in schools: There’s the official bake sale, and there’s the shadow economy: Kids selling homework. A price gets established. Comparative advantages are being played out. Money changes hands. But we don’t condone this of course.

So if it’s neither educators themselves nor kids on their own initiative, let’s look outside the walls of the classroom. There are many initiatives that partner with schools to introduce kids to the ideas of social and business entrepreneurship. Some of these target only the best schools, the most promising students. Much like teachers they overlook that entrepreneurial talent doesn’t equate success in school.

This should change. All schools should get in touch with authentic entrepreneurs, from their community and beyond. Many elder entrepreneurs are happy to share their expertise, would be glad to mentor the up and coming.

When we go beyond the bake sale, we can create spaces where real expertise meets raw talent. Spaces where entrepreneurial talent is developed. And classrooms where a new mantra is heard: “Get up, start up!”

After three months of education expedition—traveling around the world in search of educational innovation and excellence—I know exactly what I want to create: playDUcation is going to become a new style of learning, an adventurous and game-based way to unfold your talents and discover skills and knowledge. playDUcation is going to be an educational enterprise driven by people who believe in the positive power of life-long learning, who believe that all people can achieve their full potential when driven by optimism, curiosity, and empowerment.

Our first goal is to help kids between 10 and 15. Kids who lost their motivation to learn and do not do well in school. What we want to offer them and their parents is an after-school tutoring program with a game-based learning approach. It will be delivered by excellent students and teachers-to-be, both in person and through social media.

There is no ready-made model to copy and paste. But I found lots of inspiration in the different places I visited and also elements to incorporate. What we do now is R&D and startup creation—by play. We do playshops and gamestorming, we use design thinking tools to create something out of nothing. And here are our playDUcative catalysts:

Merging ideas in an open environment

Years ago, I thought innovation needs to take place behind closed doors. Now, I realize that involving outsiders can add invaluable power and speed to your ideas. We constantly find people who have an interest in wrapping their minds around the same issues. There’s a whole movement of people who want to merge the worlds of play and learning. I’m thankful and impressed what brilliant minds can produce in a short amount of time! I hope that each of the people so far involved feels my thankfulness immediately and also while reading this.

Our Third Teacher lives above Berlin

It may seem almost too luxurious, but having an inspiring space is a huge asset. The playDUcation office and its sunny rooftop contribute much to our well-being and wide open minds. We even have a magic red kitchen from IKEA for cooking up more than ideas!

Grasping things helps us grasp ideas

The big table below is our most-prized possession. Basti and I found it by chance a month ago. It’s an exhibition piece from a furniture store that they had just put on sale. We both knew immediately: It’s going to be ours! It came with 15 wooden panels that show the different colors it’s available in as well as six different legs.

Calling it our PlayDesk, we hide little drawings below the panels to make introductory rounds more fun. You pick a color, take out the drawing and then have to introduce yourself connected to what you see.

White walls soon fill with ideas

Another creative asset in our playshops are the so-called “Easyflip”. With their help we simply transformed all our walls into giant flip charts. Idea Paint to write on is cool, but the ability to move parts of ideas from one wall to another and create a new context all around them is even better!

Enlightenment through quotations

My good old ZettelZ Lamp by Ingo Maurer offers us an inspirational bon mot each time we look up. When somebody particularly likes one of the quotations, they take it down and offer another one to put up. What also happens is that our web resident Basti takes small insights from our playshops and tweets them out to the world.

Overall it’s been an exhilarating and fun process. We’re building a new approach to learning in an atmosphere of play. We’re on the way to prototype our game-based tutoring approach. We’re glad to share our ideas. And we’re open to your input: If you have questions to ask or answers to share, please let us know!

We’re also happy to invite guests to our future playshops. Best get in touch through Facebook or Twitter and let us know what you would bring to the table. Rest assured: Once you stand on the roof and enjoy the view, you will be glad you wrote us.

When I started my playDUcative journey in February, I had basically no clue about Twitter and how it works but wanted to find out. I got some practice and insight, I was able to connect various interesting people, to get information and ideas like from no other media - but it really made click for me just last Tuesday during TEDxHamburg. It’s as simple as that: If in an audience of almost 500 people just two handful are busy tweeting and using the hashtag, and you’re one of them, you try to get the essence of what is said, including the bon-mots, as quickly as possible. You have to limit your message to 140 characters. You follow the stream and you’re part of it.

I found myself in the situation of competing with a couple of others for the best expressions. Sometimes they were quicker and had the better words and the quicker tweet for what was said. Then, I gave in and retweeted it. A few times, I managed to get an idea quicker and better, so others retweeted me, which made me proud. Finally, what I knew to be considered a distraction and a nuisance was welcomed: Interacting with your pad on your lap or typing into your smartphone was encouraged. On three huge LED-Walls, for each tweet to #TEDxHH a light ball faded in – a nice optical play. Now, after a couple of days after the conference, I realize that I have the most vivid memory of what was said and presented – by far more that I ever had after a conference. I think that tweeting helped me better focus and remember than anything else.

There are around the world several innovative educationalists who use Twitter to enhance their lessons and the learning experience of their students, like Monika Rankin, who has published her „Twitter Experiment“ already in 2009. There is a playDUcative principle behind that: Don‘t go against the distracting offers that the world has, just go with them, accept them and incorporate them into learning. Your brain runs on fun!

How did you found Public Workshop?

Public Workshop grows out of my work over the past 14 years helping a diverse group design organizations, schools, communities and cultural institutions more do more, and do it better. This work typically involves testing the limits of how we learn, design, collaborate and innovate. I have been fortunate to work with both the luckiest and unluckiest of partners, in some of the most supported as well as underserved places. I say that I am lucky because this has meant that there has been little opportunity to be hemmed-in by dogma or doctrine.

When you are faced with getting an unruly class of thirteen year olds or a collection of justifiably skeptical community members excited about learning or design, the only thing that matters is what actually works- these situations provide a very immediate, powerful feedback loop.

This has given me an incredibly unique perspective on how to stimulate the very best learning and design that happens to be particularly relevant right now as our systems for learning, design and making cities face tremendous challenges. Indeed, in many respects, I have been the R & D mechanism for my partners and Public Workshop not only continues this tradition but wholeheartedly embraces this role.

So what is the benefit that Public Workshop brings to people? Is it learning?

Public Workshop creates uniquely engaging opportunities for youth and their communities to shape the design of their city. You may wonder why learning isn’t an explicit part of Public Workshop’s mission statement. In fact, I see design and learning as synonymous and furthermore, I believe that the city will be the classroom of the future. Of course, with Public Workshop’s work, the city already is the classroom, our laboratory, but it’s important that we’re not the exception.

What’s the most playducative experience you’ve had? When were you learning by play – and how?

Play is absolutely central to my work, allowing me to help others accomplish great things. Although play has been a central piece of how I work for almost 20 years, as I’ve relentlessly evolved my the methods and tools that I use to do more and do it better, play has naturally come to fill a more prominent role in my practice. In fact, it is so embedded in what Public Workshop does and who I am, that I barely even think of it or describe it as play- it’s just how I do things.

How does this manifest itself?

On one hand, play can take the very literal form of a game, such as when I use massive games of hide-n-go-seek to rapidly accelerate young designers learning about the site upon which they may design, and build a structure. The simple insertion of a child’s game into a design/learning process literally shaves days off the traditional process of mapping and investigating a potential building site.

Sometimes play manifests itself in our work as the absurdly large, six foot tall thermometers we built for finding heat islands in an underserved neighborhood. Through this and other means, we made the simple act of measurement visible and ridiculous enough that passersby would be curious, disarmed and potentially willing to engage us, giving us access to stories and information about the neighborhood that might be otherwise inaccessible. 

At other points in our work, play is so embedded in what we do, that you just might miss it on first glance. For example, we rely heavily on the idea of doing and rapid-prototyping as tools for accelerating learning, collaboration and great design. These processes are inherently playful and even joyfully competitive when appropriate. They encourage the failure, resilience and the uninhibited testing of possibility that are very much part of childhood - skills that we often forget by the time we reach adulthood.

So, when people play they also achieve meaningful things?

Indeed, embedded in play is a seamless integration of doing and thinking, or even doing as thinking, which is absolutely the attitude we need to solve some of our most pressing challenges. And on a very personal level the language I use, the energy I put into any project/class and the physical expressiveness (leaping, running, getting dirty on the floor while building, etc.) of how I work or lead is unabashedly playful.

Sometimes all of these things are very intentional and do allow great things to happen but it is also very much who I am. In short, I work this way because it’s more effective but it also makes me incredibly happy and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Thank you Alex – also for all the projects and places you’ve recommended in NYC!

Alex Giliam has worked with such organizations as the Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum, the Rural Studio, the Chicago Architecture Foundation, and the University of Pennsylvania. Helping start the Charter High School For Architecture and Design in Philadelphia and numerous other architecture programs for youth, he is a national expert on K-12 design education. His work has been featured on NPR’s Studio 360 and in magazines such as Metropolis, ID and the Architect’s Newspaper.

Recently, he helped an architecture firm and its community partners create an innovative program in which a cadre of talented young adults help initiate positive change in Chicago neighborhoods through environmental assessment studies, community asset mapping and neighborhood service/design projects. Currently he is a Fellow at the National Building Museum in Washington, DC. 

On the last photo, you see Alex proudly explaning his playful approaches to me (camera), Stephanie Jansen from Phorms (left) and Katie Koch from Project Interaction. (Middle)

But the rebel in me decided to study engineering and communication. There‘s a tiny feeling of betraying my family by choosing not become an architect, yet at the same time I still harbor a child-like fascination to architecture and design. Especially when they‘re connected to learning environments.

In New York I met an architect whose work combines architecture, design and education: Alex Gilliam, the founder of Public Workshop.

The playDUcative principle behind Public Workshop is to organize the collective creativity of communities for making change. He gets groups of people, such as schools or neighborhoods, to actively contribute to changing public spaces for a better life. He involves regular people in design processes that otherwise be done by experts. He gets young children, mommies, teens, school classes, business teams... all kinds of groups to go deep into insight, to research and understand what the spaces are and could be for. Then he prototypes their solutions with them: Out of the most impressive materials they create shapes and constructions that finally lead to new architectural pieces or landscapes.

As an example of his work he described the revitalization process of a creek area in Austin, a space initially occupied by rats and obscure people. Public Workshop took the neighborhood along a designing journey consisting of different creative steps like searching for the answer to the question: “Who is Waller Creek for?“. The people spent time in the creek area, questioning the use of the area by the neighborhood and its possibilities in an extremely playful way. They hung red swings, played croquet, had brunch in the creek, played tag, looked for fossils, explored... stuck out feet in the water and played dominoes. And that all started from the questions: "Waller Creek Is For........" and "How do you know if you haven't tried?"

One of the playful brainstorming and design thinking ideas was to bake a huge cake instead of architecture model with more than 100 people – and to eat in on the spot afterwards, continuing the discussion about the redesign of the place.

Another example was the renovation and refurbishing process of a whole school during a couple of months – and embedding the planning and doing process into the learning of the kids. And from what I understood, it was a lot more than putting some paint on the walls, even if they were rebuildig existing structures. They were going to the core of the of the building and transforming it.

Through its tools and events, Public Workshops creates communities and generates deep learning, understanding and ownership about the spaces and their transformation. The really cool thing about Public Workshop is the atmosphere Alex creates - it comes across even in a short discussion: There is play in the air and smiles on all faces. People collaborate, investigate and create. They take on role play. People learn together, by doing, combining, trying out, failing, doing it again.

For me Alex is one of the many inspiring agents of a new learning culture who directs the pleasure and benefit of architectural and design thinking straight into educational processes.  He's a cheerleader of possibility.

Alex agreed to answer for playDUcation some questions – read tomorrow a short interview with this passionate architect and educationalist by play!

All photographs from this blog post are published courtesy of Alex Gilliam and Public Workshop. Thank you Alex!

I took the chance to volunteer with Jon Young and his team of nature connection mentors, who helped me and a bunch of other guests to enter nature’s communication system: The Language of the Birds. It was a five-day residential program held in a retreat centre nestled into the Californian coastal hills about two hours South of San Francisco.

And this is how it works: Enter a room full of 80 or so people from two to 82 years old. More than ten of them are program staff, half of which are volunteering. Another ten are keen learners from past years. Another ten people have been working on bird language for the past eight months in a different program that is run nearby. They all show up because they had so much fun the last time and because there is no end to the book of nature – there is always so much more to find out.

Stacking the Deck

There are only two designated “teachers” in the front of the room, so most of the newcomer guests have no idea that they will learn the most from being mixed into a salad bowl of different levels of expertise. In fact, you have no chance to not learn this stuff. The principle is to make sure that enough people who already have knowledge and experience are present. They are mentoring you as playfully perfectly as a ten-year-old boy would mentor a six year old.

Causing Connection

The more you get to know nature, the more nature opens and shows itself to you. This is especially true for bird language. As long as we’re preoccupied with thoughts about our agenda, we tend to create enormous ripples of disturbance in nature. It takes a while to turn the busy mind down and tune in to your senses and be outside in a really peaceful way. This is when connection to nature happens. It is very nourishing, can become an essential source of wellbeing in kids’ as well as adults’ life and it is contagious.

Sticking it Together

The dressing for the human salad consists of so called “cultural elements” – things to do or install that foster community and thus more learning. It spreads connection between the individual humans like a viral infection. For instance, one cultural element is “Games”, like the “Jedi Training Game” on the picture below.

Big Meal – Big Bowl!

The learning meal mix is prepared in a big bowl, an underlying structure that holds everything together. This is called the 8 Shields or directions model, which actually looks like eight pieces of cake of which each represents a wealth of things. This complex yet very intuitive model was developed and tweaked collaboratively with participants during the 80ies and 90ies. It creates a natural feel to the flow of the programs. You can see a simplified version of the model below:

After a couple of days everything and everybody turns into a learning village, meeting in large and small circles, engaged in conversations that matter, setting free individual and group potential and creativity with yet another mentoring tool: The art of asking powerful questions to yourself and those around you,.

Learning Process Distilled

Now what does the actual learning process look like?

1. Sitting quietly on the land, listening, taking in, taking notes.

2. Harvesting observations in small groups of one area, creating a map overflowing by the richness of many eyes’ sightings and many ears’ listenings.

3. Bringing it together in the large group debrief, were the stories of what the heck happened out there to our protagonists the birds, mammals and other creatures come to life again. They are revealing the universal patterns of nature’s communication system, that are – unlike our human languages – pretty much the same all over the globe.

Which is cool, since I am not living in the coastal hills of near San Francisco bay, but on a glacial hill in Eberswalde, Germany. And I can tell you – birds have a life just as exciting on this side of the ocean! The other day I was trotting home with my 4 year old son when we heard an alarm that made my hair stand up. “There’s a Sparrow Hawk coming”, I hissed, and motionless we watched until two minutes later the dreaded killer of many a songbird swooped by.

To me birds are great teachers that turn the former blur of chirps into endless riddles and  play, firing up my brain’s neuron activity and reminding me of the inter-connectedness of every little thing in nature, including myself. I also hear way more sounds and complexity in my favorite music now!

Got interested? Find out more about bird language, test your inter-species communication skills with dog barks or immerse yourself in a 5-day nature connection style mentoring extravaganza about the teaching methods and tools, at an upcoming “Art of Mentoring” workshop in Scotland this summer.

Many thanks for the pics to David Hage and Jason Kwong!

Elke Loepthien designs learning and community experiences in, with and through nature. She is an alumni of the Regenerative Design Institute in California and of the action learning based Gaia University International. Currently she is graduating in Holistic Environmental Education at the University of Applied Sciences in Eberswalde, Germany, with a thesis about Connection as an Aspect of an Ecology of Learning. Her favorite bird is the Starling.

In their book NurtureShock Po Bronso and Ashley Merryman point to great research findings on the interplay of sleep quantity and school success. “Every single hour counts!” is Merryman's mantra in her PopTech talk. Especially during puberty teenagers are practically asleep in the wee morning hours, those same hours in which teachers already try putting clever ideas in their minds. Teaching against nature doesn't work.

I've been interested in the science of sleep since I did my civil service—in lieu of military service, then mandatory in Germany—on an Intensive Care Unit (ICU) of our local hospital. Most work had to be done in the early shift, which meant getting up 5:20am to be there at half seven when the night shift ends. Surprisingly my body adapted rather well to this early rise.

During my university days sleep quality plummeted. There were many all-nighters to pull, many parties to be at, a few discount red-eye flights to catch. Having had the previous experience of great sleep and rising early this resulted in a half-serious poster on “The wonderful world of sleep”.

Now in the luxurious position of an education activist who sheds the regular 9to5 I adapted the habit of taking mid-day naps. “Pompous!” you say. “Like little kids!”, you may think. Besides the many cultures in the worlds where long mid-day naps or siesta are a given, even celebrated and protected as part of the national identity, there's been a stream of research on the interplay of sleep and learning.

While the 2005 Nature review article on “Clues to the functions of mammalian sleep” opened with the words “The functions of mammalian sleep remain unclear” latest neuroscience keeps showing a vital connection between good sleep and great learning. For one there's already a popular notion and an idiom in German: “Das lern ich doch im Schlaf!” — roughly: I'll (easily) learn that while I'm asleep. The other idea that's out there is studying with a book under your pillow, hoping the wisdom manifested on its printed pages will somehow magically transfer into your head.

That's not how it works.

What sleep science and learning specialists now seem to agree on is that the brain works hard at night to filter its garbage, the non-noteworthy clutter, the billion thoughts and ideas you had during the day. What isn't filtered out, the ten-thousand bits and pieces that may still be relevant the next day, are consolidated and become part of your mid-term memory. When certain knowledge or facts are kept being repeated day in and day out, like your parents’ names or your way to work, they are committed to your long-term memory.

Now what do you with this? Knowing about the importance of sleep can help you learn better. But teens and people of all ages young at heart won‘t like to know about this until there is some playDUcative tool to create insight and reflection in a fun way - here are two of them: 

Béa recently got me Keel‘s ‘A Simple Diary’ that I started writing in before going to bed. I also use to as a sleep diary, noting the times I write in it, as well the hour I rise and shine. Over time I hope to get a better sense of how much sleep my body needs and some hard data on whether or not the naps really help. Granted, it's self-reported data and won't hold up to scientific standards, but I still consider it a useful guidance and a way of putting the findings from sleep science into personal practice.

As most people around the world in favor of the „learning revolution“ are advocates of the use of digital technology for learning, you will probably also like another tool called f.lux , a little helper app for your computer that dims its screen at night. However it doesn't only make it a little darker to avoid eye strain at night, it actually changes your screen's color temperature over the course of the day. Much like the sun has a golden glow at dawn, this helps the circadian rhythm in your body to not be throw off by the bright white-and-blue Facebook feed that you're “just checking for a minute!” way past midnight.

Last Saturday, I’ve attended a Mission at the Stiletto Spy School, founded and brought to life by an enormously powerful woman entrepreneur, Alana Winter. The registration process alone was intriguing, I had to chose a special agent name and describe my real life as a cover identity. The day had three training elements, one more captivating than the other – always finishing with a reflection element in the group and transfer of fun and learning to real life.

First, we learned how to handle a rifle and then how to shoot. I wasn’t doing that for the first time: As I grew up in Romania, we had in the 8th grade a training called something like “The Preparation of Youth for the Defense of the Republic”… that’s a long time ago. But I managed to hit almost only the bullseye! I had a lot of respect for being in a place with real weapons, but focusing on shooting on a target, really focusing and thinking of nothing else, gave me an extraordinary inner strength.

Then, we had a guy called Val who trained us in combat and made us understand the neuralgic points of a human body. We’ve learned about the right breathing in a dangerous situation, and how to fall. I have a totally different relationship to hard wooden floors now – this wasn’t training on mats because you cannot order a mat when you’re just about to be attacked.

The third part of our mission was about how to dance in a seducing way – a dancer and artist from the School of Burlesque did the training. A lot of girls’ talk, tips and tricks, but the most important was how to turn imperfection – or what we think is imperfect or even disastrous – into something lovable, attractive, fun.

Just yesterday, a place called The Super Hero Supply Store gave me the playDUcative super WOW!

What you first see is an incredibly well designed store, with basically gimmick themes articles, in our case everything about Super Heroes. The articles are something that people would buy in tons to give inspiring and extraordinary humorous presents to people who actually don’t need anything! You can buy cans with superpowers, special equipment, you can experience a mind reader and a devillainizer, you can put a cape on and a mask, and when you buy something there you must take a vow that you will only use it for the good. If this does not put a huge grin on your face and absolutely warm you heart, you’re a “Spassbremse”, a kill-joy.

But there is a whole organization dedicated to kids learning behind it, and getting to know what they actually do left us in total awe of what imagination can contribute to change in education! 826 National is a nonprofit tutoring, writing, and publishing organization with locations in eight cities across the USA. Have a look at ther homepage to learn more: http://826national.org/about/

This is what happens behind the store! There is a secret door, and you go through and there is a huge room where kids aged 6 to 18 learn together with volunteers. Each 826 chapter provides drop-in tutoring, class field trips, writing workshops, and in-schools programs—all free of charge. Because they believe that “the proof is in the pudding, 826 programs almost always end with a finished product, such as a newspaper, a book, or a film. This teaching model, known as project-based learning, encourages students to collaborate and to make creative decisions, and gives them ownership over the learning process.”

Because of the awesome, playful, humorous ideas they never fail to find people who engage in this game, volunteer, donate money and time – also VIPs and well known stars. The power of repackaging not only stuff, but also the reality of life is great – a true superpower!

A dark long corridor gets transformed into a gallery of blue art and a place to learn maths in motion: Kids get an arithmetic problem at one end and then run down the corridor to find the solution.


4 to 5 years old learn to reflect emotions, such as anger, through mood boards.

5 to 6 years old plan, build, place and maintain bird houses – and use all the instruments that grown-ups would also use, and nobody is overprotective.

Firstgraders work themselves through Manhattan – their result is a quite precise map of the different districts. Brad Choyt explains that they have done and redone it until they got it right and it was good enough. At the Blue School, kids learn to fail safe.

Stepping out of the school and reflecting on the playDUcation journey so far I get the feeling that a great upheaval in education is within reach as well. What the Guggenheim describes as a “period of collaboration, interchange, synthesis, and innovation” is what I see happening in the field of learning. New approaches to learning like at The Blue School, new concepts like the blue 3 Rs and a new emphasis on emotions and relationships have the chance to radically shift our view of how we learn. And who knows, perhaps the Guggenheim will one day dedicate an exhibition to this shift of perspective as well.

Many thanks to Brad Choyt for the tour through the Blue School and to Steph Jansen and Basti Hirsch for sharing the revolutionary thoughts!