Want to know what Chinese takeout, drug runners, and violins have to do with educational innovation? Watch the video.

We’ve written about innovation in the face of hardship before (like with last summer’s protests in Iran and war spurring telemedicine). This time, we’re looking at education. In a recent TED talk, Charles Leadbeater, a financial journalist turned innovation consultant, said that instead of spending all our time studying the best examples of educational models (like Finland’s or New Zealand’s, which studies rate the highest), we could be learning from the countries with the worst school systems. And not because they’re cautionary tales.

These are the places where there’s a huge need, unmet demand, and not enough resources for traditional solutions to work. So, he says, they’re the places where the most innovation occurs. And because these innovations aren’t working within existing systems, they might actually be easier to transplant than, say, the tenants of Scandinavian social democracy that lead to good schooling. They’re also inexpensive.

Favelas in Brazil and slums in Kenya are turning education on its head. Instead of “pushing” education onto students (like with exams, memorization, homework, etc), they’re pulling students in. Laptops, games, and projects not only draw children off the street, but also deliver the practical skills and knowledge they can’t wait 10 years to acquire through a traditional education. He highlights some fascinating learning technologies and makes some interesting points. (Transcript here)

Interested in some of the programs he mentioned?

You can find even more examples in this white paper, “Learning from the Extremes,” by Charles Leadbeater and Annika Wong.

For an example of educational innovation Acton-style, read about the Acton Academy.

Photo courtesy of Dude School.

Both sim games that the Acton Foundation entered, Robo-Rush! and Galactic Zappers, won bronze awards in the “best video game” category.

“The fact that our learning games are wining awards in video game and entertainment categories is extremely encouraging.  It further validates our efforts to make business education truly enjoyable,” says Ben Allen, director of learning technologies at the Acton Foundation.

Acton is honored to win such awards, especially given the stiff competition:
the contest had over 2000 entries from 32 countries.  ”The 2009 competition was an all new level for the competition,” said Mike Sauce — Founder of the Horizon Interactive Awards.  ”The overall quality of the entries was far and away the best we ever had and judging was very competitive.”

If you haven’t yet, try one of these award-winning sim games at http://www.actonsims.com.

He said he was impressed for seven reasons:

First, to understand Acton, you have to realize that they are one of the hottest business schools for Entrepreneurship.  This is in part because they are focusing on all three types of learning: learning to be, learning to do, and the traditional learning to know.  The simulations are, naturally, around learning to do, and can exist outside of the other two, but are more powerful given the “to know” and “to be” aspects.

Thing that Impressed Me Number One:  Given that, Acton decided that to deliver the best-in-the-world education that was their vision, they would need to build and use some number of educational simulations.  While so many organizations spend years just debating this, the leadership of Acton made this realization quickly and acted upon it.

Thing that Impressed Me Number Two:  Acton identified a series of areas where students routinely had trouble understanding to drive the creation of sims.

Thing that Impressed Me Number Three: They sought out developers of pure Flash-based mini-games, but then evolved to include talent from eLearning vendors as well.

Thing that Impressed Me Number Four: Acton made fully available the deep subject matter experts/practitioners in the areas they were covered to be full members of the development team.  These subject matter experts were not compliant in the sim design, they were committed.

Thing that Impressed Me Number Five: The sims were each about one hour long, with very accessible graphics but rigorous and deep computational models.  They represent a production value that is good enough to be impressive and classic, without breaking the bank of eye candy.

Thing that Impressed Me Number Six:  They have so far built six simulations, roughly two at a time, cycling back the best practices learned from each into the next.

Thing that Impressed Me Number Seven:  From the student reviews I have seen, they seem to work very well.

Acton has not just produced the right content for the right reasons, they have also role-modeled the right approach and right ambitions.

To experience the games yourself, visit www.actonsims.com.

The Communicator Awards honors creative excellence for communications professionals.  We received the Award of Distinction, which we are quite happy to receive.

For more on the awards, click here.

Click here to play the game.  Registration is free (for now)!

Thanks to everyone that helped make this game what it is today!

A free learning management system (LMS), Moodle allows users to upload curriculum quickly and easily and communicate with classmates with ease.  There are over 2.4 million online courses that use Moodle today.  Learn more at www.moodle.com.