Creative Learning: How the MIT Media Lab Learns and How Everyone Else Can Learn This Way Too

We live in a world that is changing more rapidly thanever before. Much of what we learn today will beobsolete tomorrow. Success depends on our ability tthink and act creatively. To thrive, we must learn toimagine creatively, reason systematically, workcollaboratively and learn continuously. This is true notjust for individuals, but for companies, communities,and even nations as a whole.

Education is looking increasingly like accounting.Standardized tests are expanding into kindergarten.Teacher evaluation is tied to narrowly defined results.And technology systems are used to manage studentsrather than enable them to create and thrive.

An alternative vision is needed. At the MIT Media Labwe develop new technologies, Institutions, andstrategies for cultivating creative learning for everyone.

Creative Learning is based on 4 guiding principles:(1) Projects -- We learn best when we are activelyworking on projects - generating new ideas,designing prototypes, making improvements andcreating final products.(2) Peers -- Learning flourishes as a social activity, withpeople sharing ideas, collaborating on projects, andbuilding on one another's work.(3) Passion -- When we focus on things we care about,we work longer and harder, persist in the face ofchallenges, and learn more in the process.(4) Play -- Learning involves playful experimentation -trying new things, tinkering with materials, testingboundaries, taking risks, iterating again & again.

We apply these principles to our own work within theMedia Lab, sparking creativity and innovation in ourresearch. And we share our creative-learning ideas andtechnologies outside of the Lab, to help others engagein Media Lab-style learningWhat would it look like if the MIT Media Lab launched an education school? Well, to start with, it wouldn't bean education school. It would be a learning school. Andit would be organized around the principles thatunderpin all Media Lab projects: uniqueness, impact,and most important, magic.The MIT Media Lab is well known for innovation andtechnology. But we're not as well known for ourinnovative work on learning. Yet, over the last thirtyyears, some of the most interesting ideas aboutlearning have come out of the MIT Media Lab.Pioneers like Seymour Papert helped us rethink howchildren can learn with new technologies, and MitchResnick created Scratch, a new way how kids canlearn to code, and code to learn.We feel it's important for the MIT Media Lab to play abigger role in the conversation about learning, onethat builds on our history of learning innovation, plays toour strength in prototyping and deploying new ideas tothe world, and leverages the reach of our networks -including member companies and foundations workingin the learning and education fields.The goal: enable everyone everywhere to learncreatively; preparing ourselves and others for life intomorrow's rapidly-changing world.
Researchers at theMedia Lab will be exploring the parameters of what"Learning over Education" could look like. We'll be collaborating with faculty in other parts of MIT. And we'llbe working with corporate and nonprofit partners whoare interested in the future world of creative learning toshape our ideas.EXAMPLE PROJECT SKETCHES:
Scratch -- Scratch is a programming language andonline community where kids can create interactivestories, games, and animations -- and share theircreations with others around the world. More than sixmillion projects have been created and shared. Bylearning to code (and coding to learn) young peopleuse Scratch to develop essential skills for life in the 21Stcentury.Making / Learning / Work -- 36 Million US adults havelow basic literacy and numeracy skills. Many are stuckin low-paying jobs or unemployment. Yet, much adultlearning has traditionally focused on content-heavyinstruction. These are the learners that need the MediaLab's approach to creative learning the most. M/LJWbrings together innovators from across the Media Labto design and prototype new solutions for adultlearners.Festival of Learning -- Every January Media Labstudents spend one weekend sharing skills andknowledge. We'd like to expend the Festival ofLearning to the rest of the world. Leveraging MIT'salumni community, we plan to recruit 100,000 volunteermentors to host seminars, skill-shares, and mini-courses that take place online and face-to-face. TheFestival of Learning celebrates a new global culture oflearning.Wildflower Montessori Schools -- Wildflower is ashopfront Montessori school. It is an experiment in anew learning environment, blurring the boundariesbetween coffee shops & schools, between home-schooling & institutional schooling, between tactile,multisensory methods & abstract thinking. Wildflower isa research platform to test new ideas in advancing theMontessori Method in the context of modern fluencies,Not MOOCs -- The Media Lab building is open to thepublic and our labs have walls of glass. But for mostpeople it is not possible to come to Cambridge. Inorder to open up the Lab, we design technologies thatenable two-way conversations between the Lab andthe outside world. We designed ?earning creativelearning, a different type of online course, that attracted25,000 users and we started hosting onlineunconferences with researchers and visitors.