Educational Innovation, Entrepreneurship and Social Activism

We live at extraordinary times to advance educational opportunity. Skills and knowledge are recognized as important by most people, and there is support for the idea that all persons deserve the opportunity to develop their talent. We also have an infrastructure, based on the efforts of the last decades, that provides all children and youth the opportunity to be schooled. We also face challenges, the challenge of translating such access into meaningful learning. What role can entrepreneurs play in helping to accelerate the pace of innovation in addressing this challenge? Should the ability to produce changes at scale in the 'education space' be a requirement to consider someone an entrepeneur? What is the distinction between an entrepeneurial individual in education and a social activist? These are the topics of discussion in this class

http://isites.harvard.edu/icb/icb.do?keyword=k101911&tabgroupid=icb.tabgroup179084

What are your thoughts about these topics?

Educational Innovation, Entrepreneurship and the Role of Universities.

 There is an excellent article in the Boston Globe Today on the efforts MIT is advancing to foster innovation. Well done President Reif!

http://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2014/01/26/mit-reboots-approach-innovation/TExxXWxI02WOR4NZKIHAFP/story.html

Why are these efforts exceptional? Why isn't it the norm for Universities to lead in creating an ecosystem that translates research based knowledge into innovative designs to address important problems? What do you think are the barriers that need to be overcome? Should universities more intentionally play this role?

Here are a couple of short articles on the role of universities in promoting innovation

http://blogs.hbr.org/2011/03/educational-innovation-technol/

http://revista.drclas.harvard.edu/publications/revistaonline/fall-2012/innovating-universities

Remembering Madiba,

We have lost a remarkable leader. A man of peace, capable of rising above his own suffering to lead a nation towards reconciliation and unity. Mandela understood one's freedom is achieved only as we help others gain theirs, an awareness that he extended even to those who took away his own freedom for so long... His long journey, and the evolution of the events that led to the remarkable democratization of South Africa, leave many lessons for us all, some of which we will discern slowly, as years go by, with the benefit of distance and time.

To those of you who are graduates of the International Education Policy Program, you share a commitment to advancing educational opportunity around the world. Your work advances the long arc of justice towards the freedom that Mandela's light shone for all, near and afar. I invite you to reflect on Mandela's legacy and to think about how it impacted your life and your commitments, and to share in this blog, for other IEP graduates, some of those reflections to remind us that we follow in Mandela's footsteps on the path towards greater justice, in each others company.

To those of you who are friends, I invite you also to share your thoughts as we honor, together, the memory of a great man.

Here is a video of Mandela's speech at Harvard, as he received an honorary degree in a special convocation

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Zh8otC-c3s

and this was a report of the Harvard Gazette

http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/1998/09.24/MandelaThrillsT.html

and here is a poem by Maya Angelou on Mandela's departure from this earth.....

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2013/12/07/249439677/watch-maya-angelous-poem-for-nelson-mandela

Fernando