How Independent Schools Can Ward Off Disruption
The prospect of disruption looms on the horizon for many of America’s independent schools. They face difficulties not unlike those of the country’s higher education system, where the increasingly burdensome cost of the postsecondary experience is causing the traditional college business model to break at its seams at the same time that disruptive entrants are gaining traction.

One More Way Independent Schools Can Ward Off Disruption
As many independent schools struggle and face potential threats from the emergence of disruptive micro-schools, what they should do to survive and thrive is an increasingly important question. Last week I wrote about two possible responses independent schools could take: creating an autonomous unit to launch a disruptive innovation themselves and using online learning as a sustaining innovation. There is also a third option open to independent school leaders to ward off disruption, which is admittedly more speculative.

You need an innovation strategy
Disruptive.... Radical....
Despite massive investments of management time and money, innovation remains a frustrating pursuit in many schools. Innovation initiatives frequently fail and successful innovators have a hard time sustaining their performance. Why is it so hard to build and maintain the capacity to innovate?

The eight essentials of innovation
Innovation is a complex, school-wide endeavor that requires a set of crosscutting practices and processes to structure, organize, and encourage it. Read the eight essentials on how to prioritize innovation to create meaningful value for overall school performance.

Inside The School Silicon Valley Thinks Will Save Education
The AltSchool is a decidedly Bay Area experiment with an educational philosophy known as student-centered learning. The approach, which many schools have adopted, holds that kids should pursue their own interests, at their own pace.

How Are Our Schools Engaging with OSG
Schools are asking how to begin engaging in online and blended learning or how other schools have navigated their journeys. The Online School for Girls has compiled five different snapshots from five of their consortium schools that highlight how exactly some independent schools have engaged strategically.

Proof Points: Blended Learning Success in School Districts
Here are six case studies of how traditional district schools improved learning outcomes after implementing blended learning. Read the key details in the schools' blended-learning strategies, the tools used, and promising results in the form of test scores and graduation rates.

Lessons Learned from a Chalkboard: Slow and Steady Technology Integration
Thank you Brad Adams, formerly from IBSC, for this commentary that compares Japanese and US approaches for integrating technology in K-12 classrooms. While many schools are consumed by a haphazard race to adopt the latest gadgets and new innovations, often these devices function as little more than expensive and colorful accessories with minimal influence on existing instructional methods. Good words of caution on change management.

Active Learning in an Intercultural Online Environment at Wilfrid Laurier University
Using active learning pedagogies, Wilfrid Laurier University professor, Gavin Brockett, created a global classroom, through videoconferencing technology, to connect 34 students in Waterloo with 9 students in Istanbul. How is your school engaging students from around the world to create a global classroom?

Stanford president John L. Hennessy considers future of HE
"When I think about MOOCs, the advantage - the ability to prepare a course and offer it without personal interaction - is what makes them inexpensive and makes them very limited." says John L. Hennessy, President of Stanford University. Hennessy states, "they were the answer when we weren't sure what the question was." He now advocates for hybrid courses, based on a relatively small set of top-quality digital lectures, enhanced by simulations, known as large selective online courses (LSOCs).

Researchers calculate cost of developing and delivering MOOCs
Researchers at Brown University and Columbia University have calculated that the cost to an institution of launching a massive open online course (MOOC) may be as high as $325,000 in some cases. The study's authors interviewed 83 administrators, faculty members, and researchers at US PSE institutions and conducted case studies to determine a method for effectively calculating the cost of launching a MOOC. They found that the main factors in driving up the cost include the number of faculty members, administrators, and instructional support personnel needed; the quality of videography; the nature of the delivery platform; the programming required for special features, such as auto-graders, virtual labs, or gamification platforms; the analysis of platform data; and the technical support required by participants. Personnel costs ranged from about $29,000 to as much as $244,000 per MOOC, with total costs ranging from nearly $40,000 to over $325,000. The researchers recommend that future studies of MOOC effectiveness include cost analyses to determine whether spending on production and delivery bears any relation to learning outcomes.

Educating Minds Online
Online courses—or an online component of a traditional class—offer a way to "give students repeated, challenging practice with the concepts we want them to know and the skills we want them to master," says Michelle Miller, a professor of psychological sciences and co-director of the first-year learning program at Northern Arizona University, and author of Minds Online: Teaching Effectively With Technology, published this fall by Harvard University Press.

Minerva Schools at KGI
Award-winning documentary filmmaker, Shual Schwarz, was invited to spend time with members of the Founding Class at Minerva. Watch a short documentary and experience student life at Minerva or an interview with school founder, Ben Nelson, on reinventing the university experience. Read about the global cultural immersion in student life, their accomplished faculty, the interactive seminar experience, and why members of their Founding Class made the decision to leave traditional undergraduate programs to attend Minerva.

This Atlantic article covers the increasing trend in Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC) and how one entrepreneur, Ben Nelson, believes he can reinvent higher education by stripping it down to its essence with his new venture, the Minerva Project.

Our Iceberg Is Melting: Changing and Succeeding Under Any Conditions

Most of the denizens of the Antarctic penguin colony sneer at Fred, the quiet but observant scout who detects worrying signs that their home, an iceberg, is melting. Fred must cleverly convince and enlist key players, such as Louis, the head penguin; Alice, the number two bird; the intractable NoNo the weather expert; and a passle of school-age penguins if he is to save the colony. Their delightfully told journey illuminates in an unforgettable way how to manage the necessary change that surrounds us all. Simple explanatory material following the fable enhances the lasting value of these lessons. Our Iceberg Is Melting is at once charming, accessible and profound; a treat for virtually any reader.

The Explainer: Disruptive Innovation and Evolving Toward Openness amidst the Disruption of Higher Education
"Big players [established CAIS schools?] focus on sustaining innovation and their more profitable customers, ignoring the regular customers who want a low cost alternative. As a result they upgrade current products by adding more bells and whistles that no one wants - they over serve. A disruptor improves product to appeal to more people. They treat the project as a separate unit with its own business model and expectations". Clayton Christensen Institute for Disruptive Innovation, Harvard University.

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Creative Schools – Ken Robinson

blended – Michael B. Horn and Heather Staker

The Road to Character – David Brooks

The Teacher Wars – Dana Goldstein

The Test – Anya Kamenetz

Excellent Sheep – William Deresiewicz

The End of College – Kevin Carey

Teach Reflect Learn – Pete Hall and Alisa Simeral

The Big Disconnect – Catherine Steiner-Adair

Where You Go Is Not Who You’ll Be – Frank Bruni

Finnish Lessions – Pasi Sahlberg

schooled – Anne Lutz Fernandez and Catherine Lutz

Freedom to Change – Michael Fullan

Children Succeed – Paul Tough

The Myth of the Spoiled Child – Alfie Kohn