Intentional Disruption in K–12 Classrooms and the Metaverse in Higher Ed

Diane Tavenner and I are back with Season 4 of our Class Disrupted podcast—something we never anticipated when we launched our first season in the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic to help parents and educators think about why our schools are structured the way they are and what a better system would look like.

This season, even as classrooms aren’t experiencing widespread disruptions like they were the past three years, we want to help educators think through how they could intentionally disrupt business as usual in a positive way. Our first episode, which you can listen to at “The Disruptive Journey Ahead” or wherever you get your podcasts, previews how we’re going to tackle the upcoming season.

Our goal is to get granular about helping educators build the capacity to innovate, because we know they seemingly have a million pressures bearing down on them at the moment. And we want to do so by not just giving a set of frameworks for how to do the work in schools, but also by putting Diane’s Summit Public Schools under the microscope with some real-time case studies of how they’re doing the work.

We also provided some personal updates and news on the podcast, all of which you can listen to here.

Higher Ed in the Metaverse

The Metaverse is a topic I’ve dug into before through a K–12 lens, but on the latest episode of Future U., Jeff Selingo helped take the exploration of virtual reality in higher education to the next level. With on-site interviews from educators at Arizona State University and Ithaca College where they are actively using virtual reality to teach students, Jeff explored the potential, early data, and hype behind this new medium.

We then welcomed Rebecca Koenig from EdSurge to the podcast to talk about what she’s learned about the experiments to set up Metaverse campuses at some universities—or “metaversities”—and where she thinks extended reality is most likely to make an impact. Jeff and I couldn’t help weighing in with our own commentary and thoughts as well.

Photo by UK Black Tech on Unsplash

Finally, we welcomed Sean Michael Morris, VP of Academics at Course Hero, one of our season sponsors this year on Future U., to situate the conversation around extended reality against the bigger backdrop of the role edtech plays, both positively and negatively, in teaching and learning in higher education. Sean offered some thoughtful commentary on the state of edtech, from observations about how the buyers—schools—exert control over the nature of the products to deeper reflections on the trust—or lack thereof—that schools have when it comes to student work, collaboration, and the question of cheating.

Have a listen to this fascinating episode, “Immersed in the Latest EdTech Buzz,” here.

Three Reflections on From Reopen to Reinvent

Outside of teaching my class on innovation and education at Harvard this semester, I’ve been on the road almost nonstop talking to K–12 educators and students about my new book, From Reopen to Reinvent. My latest travels have taken me from DC to Denver and back to DC again.

Against that backdrop, reviews of and conversations around the book continue to be published. Christian Talbot, the president of the Middle States Association, offered two more reflections on the book recently. I’ve enjoyed reading his reviews because, in each one, I come away having learned something. You can read the two newest ones at “From Threat Rigidity to Opportunity” and “From Zero Sum to Positive Sum.”

I also had the opportunity to join longtime education leader and innovator Tom Vander Ark on his GettingSmart podcast. We covered a lot of ground as we went chapter by chapter through much of the book, which you can listen to here, at “Michael Horn on Recreating School for Every Child.”

As a reminder, you can purchase your copy of From Reopen to Reinvent here or wherever you buy your books. And once you’ve read it, please leave a review at Amazon, Goodreads, or Barnes & Noble. Thank you.

And as always, thank you for reading, writing, and listening.