What Next?: Educational Innovation and Philadelphia’s School of the Future

When the school district of Philadelphia teamed up with the Microsoft Corporation in 2006 to redesign the American high school, the result was the School of the Future, hailed by National Public Radio as the next big thing, by Education Week as a new high-tech school [that is] strutting its stuff, and by NBC News as next-generation education.

While technology was a crucial element at the School of the Future, the redesign sought fundamentally to rethink the models for teaching and learning. Their trademark framework for decision making, the 6Is -introspection, investigation, inclusion, innovation, implementation, and, again, introspection-is now being used by organizations in more than fifteen countries.