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21st century education is a very different beast than the education of the past because our world is vastly different, and the pace of change just keeps increasing. As as result, we have to take a very different approach to learning if we want to prepare our children to thrive in the digital age.

So today, we talk to Jeff McClellan, the Founding Director of StartSOLE, an organization that is transforming education through SOLE (Self-Organized Learning Environments).

SOLE is a process-based approach to education, as opposed to results-based, that helps prepare students for success in today’s era of technology and information. By providing an early intervention in education, SOLE can level the academic playing field and increase equity among all students, while helping kids develop the skills they they need for a modern digital society.

We unbox:

• What education should be preparing students for and, at the end of the day, what our true purpose is as educators
• Turning the city of Cleveland into the campus for a STEM high school
• Jeff’s uncanny ability to hire exceptional staff and how he makes those decisions
• The difficulty many organizations have had implementing project-based learning, mastery-based grading, and other new approaches to education (and how StartSOLE makes those things easier to implement)
• How you can take small chunks of these newer educational design philosophies and integrate them into more traditional educational environments
• The essence of StartSOLE and its broad applications in the education space
• How StartSOLE allows teachers to do the thing that they’re already doing, but better
• Where resources should be allocated for future education
• Job-ready skills: creativity, critical thinking, communication, and collaboration

Resources:

• Get the free StartSOLE app: https://startsole.org/
• StartSOLE on Twitter: https://twitter.com/StartSOLE
• Jeff on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffrey-mcclellan-509b6959/
• Watch: “Kids can teach themselves” by Sugata Mitra

Learning Unboxed is produced in part by Crate Media

Recorded by Eric French at WOSU Studios in Columbus, Ohio