Exploring EDgility

Books

EDgility Defined

EDgility was first publicly describe in Agile and Lean Concepts for Teaching and Learning: chapter: Getting Agile at School, authors: Paul Magnuson, William Tihen, Nicola Cosgrove & Daniel Patton, by Springer Verlag, 2019, ISBN 978-981-13-2751-3. (the EDgility chapter is:Getting Agile at School, pages 115-132)

Working with the support of the school’s professional development department, teachers engaged, in their particular classroom contexts, with action research cycles of planning, doing, reflecting, and redoing until arriving, at least for the time being, at ten practices of an Agile mindset for teaching and learning.

EDgility in Practice

EDgility in Practice Industry Practices, Processes and Techniques Adopted in Education: Agile in the Alps: Stories of the Agile Classroom, from Teaching and Learning to Administration, authors: Nicola Cosgrove, Tom Cosgrove, Sarah Graham & Paul Magnuson, by Springer Verlag, 2022, ISBN 978-981-19-3517-6. (the EDgility chapter is:Getting Agile at School, pages 245-266)

Staff from LAS have captured their understanding of agile in their context and detailed the way that they see it working for them. This chapter begins with stories from the classroom and finishes with some examples from the administrative side of the school.

Agile Resources

Work to keep your educational values and goals in focus and slowly take on the Agile vocabulary.

Educational Agility

• ARC for Schools - Agile Research Consortium for schools has many resources to find what you need: research, trainers, and other educational agility practitioners.
• Peak Challenges - As the authors of EDgility we are glad to discuss EDgility and/or training.

Agile Fundamentals

• Agile Manifesto - this document started the Agile/Scrum movement.
• Scrum Guides - Scrum is a long-standing straight forward agile framework, popularized by the Scrum Guide there is a web version (in 30+ languages), PDF version in English.
• Become an Effective Software Engineering Manager: How to Be the Leader Your Development Team Needs, ISBN: 9781680507249, by James Stanier. This book is a reflection about how to go beyond agile and how Spotify inspires its teams and out-learns its competition.

Uplift Resources

Technology companies focus on uplifting communication, feedback and future to create an environment of enthusiastic, engaged learners. Fundamentally, they are moving away from an ‘authoritative’, ‘telling’ and ‘corrective’ approach and instead toward an ‘amplifying’, ‘curious’ and ‘collaborative’ approach.

Pixar’s Plussing

Amplifying feedback over silencing feedback.

• Pixar’s “Plussing” - Feedback Tool - In this short video he describes how to use Pixar’s Plussing in the the classroom to improve learning and collaboration. David Lee is the Tech & Innovation Specialist at Singapore American School. He is also the author of Design Thinking in the Classroom.
• Pixar’s Secret to giving Feedback - a short, clear article describing the differences between silencing and amplifying (‘plussing’ or ‘additive’) feedback.
• How Pixar Fosters Collective Creativity, by Ed Catmull. A Harvard Business Review article that describes the misconception about creativity. The focus of the article is summarize with this quote: “The view that good ideas are rarer and more valuable than good people is rooted in a misconception of creativity.” Ed Catmull is the author of Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration, ISBN-13: 978-0593070109, by Ed Catmull (co-founder of Pixar) and Amy Wallace. This is the book that sparked a lot of interest in ‘additive’ or ‘plussing’ feedback.
• Five ways Pixar makes Better Decisions - a Harvard Business Review article that describes how organizations with good judgment have a number of typical attributes. One is that they involve a number of different people in making important decisions. Their senior executives keep in mind that they don’t have a monopoly on knowledge and judgment and therefore involve multiple people in decision processes. Thomas H. Davenport is the President’s Distinguished Professor in Management and Information Technology at Babson College, a research fellow at the MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy, and a senior adviser at Deloitte Analytics. He is the author of over a dozen management books, most recently Only Humans Need Apply: Winners and Losers in the Age of Smart Machines and The AI Advantage.

Effective Feedback

Sharing perspective instead of authoritatively telling.

• The secret to giving great feedback: The Way We Work, a TED series, by cognitive psychologist LeeAnn Renniger. She shares a scientifically proven method for giving effective feedback. Visit https://go.ted.com/thewaywework for more! She also has a book: Surprise: Embrace the Unpredictable and Engineer the Unexpected, ISBN-13 : 978-0399169823, by Tania Luna and LeeAnn Renninger PhD.
• How to Give Respectful and Constructive Code Review Feedback - a short video by Dr. Michaela Greiler (Doctor McKayla) explaining 10 ways to respectfully collaborate and improve.

Teachers on Communication and Inspiration

• Teaching Methods for Inspiring the Students of the Future - A TEDxLafayette talk by Joe Ruhl on working with students: Choice, Collaboration, Communication, Critical Thinking, Creativity and Caring.
• What makes a good teacher great? - A TEDxSantoDomingo talk by Azul Terronez on connecting and listing to students and developing rapor.

Invoke, Involve, Inspire - Stories

Allow students to dream a future and work with difficulties.

• Common Structure of the Greatest Communicators - A TEDxEast talk by Nancy Duarte. Explores making the status quo unappealing and draw them forward to the future of what can be, drawing people in and using resistance to move forward.
• The Clues to a Great Story - shares what he knows about storytelling – starting at the end and working back to the beginning. A TED talk by Andrew Stanton, the writer behind “Toy Story” and “Wall-E” and “John Carter.” Contains graphic language.
• The magical science of storytelling - a TEDxStockholm by David JP Phillips. David JP Phillips shares key neurological findings on storytelling and with the help of his own stories, induces in us the release of four neurotransmitters of his choice.