075 – Innovators and the F-Word with Tony Wagner

Innovators and the F-Word with Tony Wagner

The world no longer cares how much our students know.  What the world cares about is what they can do with what they know.  That’s the world of innovation.  That’s the new innovation era.  –Tony Wagner

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[In This Episode][Guest Bio][Additional Notes][Text Transcript]

In This Episode

• How can we get teens to discover their innovation potential?

• What is the secret of educating for innovation?

• How much will innovation matter over the next 20 years?

Join us for a gripping look into the future economy and what students will need for success.

Today’s guest is an expert in residence at Harvard’s Innovation Lab and an extremely innovative educator. If you have been wrestling with how to bring innovation into your classroom, this episode was made just for you. And yes, we do talk about the F-word–the other F-word–failure and how it relates to educational success.

Tony Wagner has been an educator for his whole career. We don’t normally think of English teachers as innovators, but you will soon discover why he is uniquely qualified to discuss creating innovators.

Get ready for some shocking revelations.

Tony is one of those powerful thinkers who shape how we view a topic. In the business world, we call him a “thought leader”. He has seen the shift to the “Innovation Economy” and has captured the thoughts of the country’s business leadership on how to navigate into this new space. It is no accident that the innovative approaches we are bringing to tech education brought us into contact.

For several years, Table Top Inventing has been offering Inventor Camp, a place of innovation, to teenagers. Let us show you just how innovative your teenager can be. With 3D printers, computer programming, and electronics, they won’t be bored.

Parents AND students both tell us, “We can’t believe how much learning happened in just 4 days!”

To sign up for Inventor Camp go to ttinvent.com/inventorcamp.

We want to help you and your kids create the future!

Guest Bio

Tony Wagner currently serves as an Expert In Residence at Harvard University’s new Innovation Lab. Prior to this appointment, Tony was the first Innovation Education Fellow at the Technology & Entrepreneurship Center at Harvard, and the founder and co-director of the Change Leadership Group at the Harvard Graduate School of Education for more than a decade. His previous work experience includes twelve years as a high school teacher, K-8 principal, university professor in teacher education, and founding executive director of Educators for Social Responsibility.

Tony is a frequent speaker at national and international conferences and a widely published author. His work includes numerous articles and six books. Tony’s latest, Most Likely To Succeed: Preparing Our Kids for The Innovation Era, co-authored by Ted Dintersmith, was just published by Scribner. Creating Innovators: The Making of Young People Who Will Change The World, was published by Scribner in 2012 to rave reviews and has been translated into 12 languages. His 2008 book, The Global Achievement Gap continues to be an international best seller, with a Second Edition recently released.

Tony recently served as the Strategic Education Advisor for a major new education documentary, “Most Likely to Succeed,” which had its world premiere at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival. He also collaborated with noted filmmaker Robert Compton to create a 60 minute documentary, “The Finland Phenomenon: Inside The World’s Most Surprising School System” in 2010. Tony earned an M.A.T. and an Ed.D. at the Harvard University Graduate School of Education.

Additional Notes

Connect with Tony:

• Email: tony@tonywagner.com
• Website: http://www.tonywagner.com
• Twitter: @drtonywagner

Mentioned in the Episode:

Tony’s Books:

• Most Likely to Succeed: Preparing Our Kids for the Innovation Era [link]
• Creating Innovators: The Making of Young People Who Will Change the World [link]
• The Global Achievement Gap: Why Even Our Best Schools Don’t Teach the New Survival Skills Our Children Need—and What We Can Do About It [link]
• Change Leadership: A Practical Guide to Transforming Our Schools [link]
• Making the Grade: Reinventing America’s Schools [link]
• How Schools Change: Lessons from Three Communities Revisited [link]

Most Likely to Succeed (film): http://mltsfilm.org/

Harvard University, I-Lab: https://i-lab.harvard.edu/

Text Transcript Coming Soon!

Both parents and educators need to understand that even our very best schools are not developing the skills that students need the most for a competitive advantage. –Tony Wagner

We no longer have a knowledge economy. That was a term coined by Peter Drucker in 1959. Knowledge today is a free commodity like air, like water, growing exponentially, changing constantly. There is no competitive advantage in knowing more than the person next to you any more because Google knows everything. –Tony Wagner