I am a New Jersey education innovation consultant with experience working exclusively with deans, executive directors, superintendents, professors, municipalities, businesses, and community organizers to develop connected learning networks. Through my work with Action Horizon Institute, we offer a wide range of credentialing opportunities for educators, scholars, and other lifelong learners.
Rather than competing with their peers for the same jobs in the labor market, your scholars rise to the challenge that has been set for them. Stop hunting jobs and starting creating jobs.
Faculty and Students: Setting the Tone
Your faculty and students are familiar with the idea of reacting fast to challenges and coming up with new ideas to solve real world problems. Many of your students already do this type of thinking in their everyday lives. They have the knowledge base and toolbox required for the future. It rests in their pockets and it is no bigger than the size of their firs which is undoubtedly clenched around purses in between chat snapping and facebooking. It is our job to show these brilliant young minds how to use these new pieces of technology to create social change within their local communities, and not just as distracting toys.
You just need to give students permission to start thinking like that within the walls of the school. You set the tone, take the chalk to draw some boundaries that help everyone work towards the same direction without having to pick their heads up too often. We work with you to do the heavy lifting of designing the curriculum so your teachers and students get the benefit of a cohesive and rewarding experience. Society benefits because you implemented new processes which allow students and teachers to grow and learn together.
Learning Experiences
Credentialing, badging, and building a list of experiences unique to your institution which can be offered to students as more of a learning playlist of various components. After spending the afternoon in a classroom with their professor they would then shuffle across town to work with the nonprofit who is hosting that particular Service Project.
Employer Partnerships
Developing employer partnerships to identify unmet needs in the workforce, and then we have a direction to steer students in terms of where they should expect to source funds to enable their impact in whatever form it may come.
Government-Funded Apprenticeships
The American Apprenticeship Initiative opened its initial $175 million fund for applications in November 2014. They are opening up applications again coming up soon. We will work with you to bring together a strong consortium of practitioners, municipalities, departments within the university, the small business community in the local economies surrounding your institution, and more.
Workshops
Collaborative, small teams, and high-level (c-suite, deans, and admins) workshops offered on-or-off-site and customized to meet your needs. One of our goals in these workshops will be to help you think about the most effective methods for redesigning the way your organization and its systems function moving forward. Optimization, personalization, and flexibility are among a few top qualities we strive for in our programming.
Students must be equipped before graduation with the following:
- Self-Assessment: Ability to self-assess themselves to identify skills and experiences they may need in order to reach the future they envision for themselves
- Self-Directed Learning: Experienced and competent in designing her own learning experiences
- Student-led Learning Community: Weekly, open and collaborative brainstorming sessions for students to work through obstacles they are struggling, meet potential mentors and circles of influence, and they know how to self-organize their own learning communities in the future
We know what works across the landscape, but each city and each school and each administrator, teacher, etc all require personalized support similar to the support the scholars require. Your institution may require a culture change, new mindsets, and without the top-level administrators buying into the education innovation process the rest of the institution may suffer.
We envision you as the leader who should execute these decisions with your own teams. With your own educators. We help you get up and running with the innovation process so that you are able to function with an open innovation policy in the future. The dependency on us is meant to reduce overtime so that our role can evolve into the next level of service you will require.
If you are interested in learning more about what it might look like to work together on an education innovation project, or if you would like to schedule a time for a meeting, please contact me. I will likely follow up the same day, if not it will be within 24 hours.