Education: teamwork over a network

In the world children are going to enter, working in teams is essential. 

But what is rarely discussed in education is that teams today operate

• working over a distributed network from remote locations
• with increasing specialization, adult teams in industry and research typically include people with differing skills.

In the increasingly complex, specialized, and interdependent world that is coming, it is likely that people will learn to work more cooperatively using cutting-edge ideas like holocracy rather than autocracy that is common today. Organizations need to make decisions quickly, but organizations have so many moving parts, that "top down" just won't work.

But if you look at how classes are organized, they are often "top down" structures: kids follow directions from adults. Educators accept that the loss of each child's sense of initiative is essential to ensure the class stays on track. But with technology, we may now have broader options. 

Initially, with a tech-enabled project, we can use the internet to recast the teacher as the CEO or Chairperson of a large organization, and have older children (say teens) acting as the managers of younger children (say 9-12 years old) who have different skill levels and experience. This gives younger children a chance to model themselves on those who are a few years older, and gives older children a sense of contribution and the maturity that comes with responsibility. 

As these projects can operate in the classroom, the teacher can still maintain control. Conversations between children of different ages would be over Skype and possibly a private social media website which only gives access to the participants and only during school hours. This means the project wouldn't require older children to visit a younger school every day, but each day for a short time they can still easily discuss their project, and share learning. Over the course of the project they will cooperatively create something, or meet the objectives articulated by the teacher. In the example that I am building, it's an imaginary world with a clear objective that relies on everyone working together. As with John Hunter's World Peace Game, "Everyone must win or nobody wins."

The beauty of this is that  younger and older kids get a chance to do a project together where they are not only empowered to make decisions on the day-to-day actions, but they need to delegate and distribute responsibilities based on differing skill levels. This is key to how business operates, yet most children graduate high school or college with minimal experiences working this way.

We want children to know how to innovate and compromise - this project teaches those skills. They learn how to make decisions on their own, while being answerable to the authority (for those 9-12 it's to the teens; for the teens it's the teacher).

If all the projects done by the various teams (say groups of four pre-teens and two teenagers, and one college student, grad student, or adult professional as a consultant who has no control over decision-making), kids will begin to see how their work in an organization contributes to the greater whole. They will get a sense of what it means to be a contribution something to larger than themselves. 

Children will learn initiative, cooperation, and responsibility to both their team and a larger structure. The extra bonus is they do all this while gaining comfort using technology the way adults do... as the means to communicate, track, and complete projects.

In today's world, and to an even greater extent in the world our children will be working, there's an increasing level of complexity and sheer amount of data that needs to be sifted through before making decisions. This game promotes the skills of sorting through data to figure out what is relevant, and determining likely consequences of action or inaction. As one example, upon arrival in the new world, a report will come in that a group of rabbits escaped an inclosure. If children are dealing with presumably larger issues, they won't commit any resources to the recovery. In 100 years (the final phase of the game leaps ahead a century), the rabbits are eating the vegetation and disrupting the local food chain. In this manner, children learn that information needs to be sorted and attempts need to be made to foresee longterm consequences.

We act as if children are becoming savvy to the communication platforms of today, but in truth they are mainly texting friends. As these new mediums of communication are often being used for gossip and cyberbullying, we see them - and videogames - as the enemy to education. Through this project we make this technology the facilitator to education. (We also break the idea of a video game being the child staring at the computerscreen, not being social, and focused on shooting other players. Now videogames are a tool to represent activities off the computer, and provide a playful forum for cooperation!)

While there is a great value in communicating in face to face meetings, the world of today (and to an even greater extent the world our children will enter), projects are accomplished by teams communicating from remote locations. Email, texting, and project management software are the rule. This leads to many challenges. Those who are able to anticipate, avoid, and overcome miscommunications in this medium, are more apt to work creatively, cooperatively, and successfully. 

There are a myriad of scenarios one can use, and they can range from highly realistic to quite fanciful. As a middle ground example, to use an imaginary world that enjoys great familiarity, let's imagine the world depicted in the film Avatar. The project goes for 8 weeks - the planning, the journey, the arrival, the mission, and then the aftermath. 

On the first day, we assemble the entire group of approximately 40-50 people. There will be six teams, each has one adult or college level consultant, two teenage teamleaders, and between 3-5 younger children. The teamleaders and consultants present at the school of the younger children and share the responsibilities of their team and their working philosophy. It is presented as a sales pitch with the goal to convince the student to join their team. This is the first sign to young kids that this is something new. They are not being told what to do, they are being petitioned as if they are in control.

Children then get to self-select which team they wish to join. Teams do not need an equal number of people, but each team must have at least three younger children for the game to proceed. In the case of an Avatar-like world those teams would be military, scientific, commerce, diplomatic relations, anthropology, and ELP (engineering/logistics/planning). The teacher wraps up with any logistics or rules or "breaking news" - then the assemblage breaks into the smaller teams. The teenage teamleaders do team building exercises and get to know the skills and interests of their group. They introduce the college age (or adult) consultant who explains their skill levels and how they are a resource for the students. They make clear that they are not the authority, they are employed by the team and thus follow directions for research required.

This project will run using an online project management tool. I will need to find or create a simple one that a child of 8 years old would understand. It also will need a virtual world with objects and a map depicting the inside of their fleet spaceships (if the Avatar-like world is used), and then of the planet where they will land. Each team will have figures representing their people. So there might be 100 soldiers, 20 engineers, 5 diplomats). This application will also need to send alerts to the team when conditions change (storms, mutiny, deposits of fuel located, etc.) The alerts will likely be manually sent by the teacher as he or she can time these alerts so that teams won't be overwhelmed or bored with current situation.

During the first two weeks the team does the trip planning. The teacher will aim to have situations where teams must cooperate and compromise (for example the military and the science team needing the same storage area, or budget issues).

The organizational structure of holocracy has the mechanism for the leader of one team, to be a member of another - we may not emulate this fully at the start, but having team members observe other teams and discuss issues would be very beneficial.

As mentioned, the world of today, and the world our children will inhabit involves working on a team - but also teams have to learn to cooperate with each other. So often when corporations or departments merge, there is chaos and conflict, but children who've done this both at ages 9-12, and then again as teenagers, will have plenty of experience.

Much of success in life, especially as adults, comes from being able to articulate your needs, convincing others to see it your way, and coming up with "win-win" scenarios. People who are good communicators can inspire others toward a positive vision for the future, and enlist others to join them. It's vital to become skilled at communicating bad news as well and suggest solutions or at least give meaning to sacrifice. Students will be invited to give presentations, write speeches, and if there is a conflict or accident, students write letters to the fictional parents of the fictional characters in the game who were lost explaining what happened and offering condolences. This will connect world events, like wars, to the real consequences. How different from the lesson taught by most video games. Other letters can be requests for more resources from back home with explanations, as well as composing laws, rules, and a Declaration of Independence from home at the game's final stage.  

The game also teaches about risk-taking and failure. This is vital for children to learn but largely ignored by curriculum today. Being able to admit when we fail, ask for help, and brainstorm new solutions is a big part of life both for children and adults.

As we know, situations change so often in the modern world, but schools rarely have a context for children to experience or address change. By having the teacher orchestrate world changing events, students can develop these skills. During the third and fourth week the game shifts to "the journey to the new world." I am picturing this as a journey of a fleet of spaceships, but the game mechanics would work for historic scenarios like sailing vessels, or the Roman Empire for example.

During "the journey to the new world" the teacher can click a button and have an explosion on a ship, or a disease outbreak - the admin version of the game gives them a list of things that will compel the teams to cooperate and make sacrifices for the common good. 

For example if there is an explosion or disease outbreak, maybe one ship has to head back home for treatment or repairs. It could be a week delayed or never arrive. Here we hope to see generative learning: a student playing at nine years old sees one of the ships of the fleet, the one carrying all the diplomats, gets delayed and this results in war breaking out with the local population. This child will suggest to future gameplayers that they distribute the diplomats across all the various ships to ensure at least one diplomat will be there when the fleet arrives to the new world.

As I hope you agree, this would be an exciting way for children to learn problem solving.

But it's also a way to learn about the world. The final week or two would be a "flash forward" - it's 100 years later and what is going on? Maybe cities are formed, the role of the military is different. Diplomats who have made peace with the local population now grapple with the desire to be independent of the homeworld. Now you can see how Avatar-like scenarios can relate to historical issues of colonialization, and modern issues of the politics of oil-producing nations. 

As we know, classes typically contain children who are learning the same thing and operating at the same level of maturity, but this is counter to how humans have lived for millennia, and it's our loss. I observed firsthand the beauty of inter-generational interaction in Vanuatu (remote tribal islands in the South Pacific) and I believe it gives older kids a chance to mature and feel connected, and younger kids role models to follow.