Quality and Innovation

“The classroom of the future does not exist!”

That’s the word from Jaime Casap (@jcasap), Google’s Chief Education Evangelist — and a highly anticipated new Business Innovation Factory (BIF) storyteller for 2015.  In advance of the summit which takes place on September 16 and 17, Morgan and I had the opportunity to chat with Jaime about a form of business model innovation that’s close to our hearts – improving education. He’s a native New Yorker, so he’s naturally outspoken and direct. But his caring and considerate tone makes it clear he’s got everyone’s best interests at heart.

At Google, he’s the connector and boundary spanner… the guy the organization trusts to “predict the future” where education is concerned. He makes sure that the channels of communication are open between everyone working on education-related projects. Outside of Google, he advocates smart and innovative applications of technology in education that will open up educational opportunities for everyone.  Most recently, he visited the White House on this mission.

The current system educational system is not broken, he says. It’s doing exactly what it was designed to do: prepare workers for a hierarchical, industrialized production economy. The problem is that the system cannot be high-performing because it’s not doing what we need it to for the upcoming decades, which requires leveraging the skills and capabilities of everyone.

He points out that low-income minorities now have a 9% chance of graduating from college… whereas a couple decades ago, they had a 6% chance. This startling statistic reflects an underlying deficiency in how education is designed and delivered in this country today.

So how do we fix it?

“Technology gives us the ability to question everything,” he says.  As we shift to performance-based assessments, we can create educational experiences that are practical, iterative, and focused on continuous improvement — where we measure iteration, innovation, and sustained incremental progress.

Measuring these, he says, will be a lot more interesting than what we tend to measure now: whether a learner gets something right the first time — or how long it took for a competency to emerge. From this new perspective, we’ll finally be able to answer questions like: What is an excellent school? What does a high-performing educational system look (and feel) like?

Jaime’s opportunity-driven vision for inclusiveness  is an integral part of Google’s future. And you can hear more about his personal story and how it shaped this vision next month at BIF.

If you haven’t made plans already to hear Jaime and the other storytellers at BIF, there may be a few tickets left — but this event always sells out! Check the BIF registration page and share a memorable experience with the BIF community this year: http://www.businessinnovationfactory.com/summit/register