The Woj Way: Moonshots Mastery Transcript
The Woj Way: 405 years ago Sweden invited John Amos Comenius to shape the Swedish Educational System. 405 years later Sweden invites Dr. Esther Wojcicki to guide Sweden in accomplishing their own moonshot in education using TRICK.
Time magazine,the Huffington Post, Forbes and many other outlets agree that Dr. Esther Wojcicki, an international figure in the education space is the most sort-after education reformer since John Amos Comenius published the first children’s picture book in 1658. Many scholars today have argued that she could be the most influential education reformer of all times due to her originality, global reach and pioneering of a new type of technology; Moonshot Technologies or “Woj Apps” as necessary tools to augment teaching and learning while giving students more autonomy. At the Faculty of Education and Future of Learning at Singularity University, Dr. Esther Wojcicki teaches and guides collegiate and professional students through her moonshots in education framework which is designed to empower students to leverage moonshot technologies to advance human potential to solve the world’s most urgent problems. This approach is not new as it is widely known that she has always been on the forefront of emerging and exponential technologies since she had her first daughter.
In the United States (and arguably the world), Woj was the earliest adopter of Macintosh in any high school classroom and she became the first teacher to have one-on-one student to computer ratio in 1985. Dr. Woj believes a strong relationship between the school and home is critical. As a mother, her and her husband Stan (a Stanford physics professor) fostered creativity and critical thinking in their daughters, encouraging them to take their own moonshots. Her three daughters have gone on to have an incredible impact on our world. Her daughter Susan is the CEO of YouTube, Anne is the CEO of 23andMe, and Janet is a world renowned professor of pediatrics, an anthropologist and epidemiologist who has created unimaginable impact in lowering the child mortality rate in Africa through her scientific and scholarly research. These are accomplishments that John Amos Comenius did not have and what distinguishes the Woj Way from Comenius is that Dr. Woj masterfully learned from her own children through experimentation and experience to find the best way to provide a personalized approach for each individual student. Her philosophy is original and her framework adopts those research principles that work and provides a space for new frameworks to be created, the moonshots.
Greatest Education Reformer of all time: 405 years later, Dr. Esther Wojcicki brings new excitement in Educational Reform
Often compared to John Amos Comenius, considered the father of modern education and known to have been the most sought-after teacher in Europe in the 17th Century, Dr. Woj has a distinct approach. Prior to Dr. Wojcicki, Comenius’ philosophy of pansophism which set the groundwork for the universal education movement was the status quo even though that system was designed for the factory model of education, it persists today. In particular, Comenius proposed the idea that in school, everything had to be taught to everyone the exact same way to ensure equality. This thought was groundbreaking in that he opened the doors for women, immigrants and other traditionally disenfranchised populations. Comenius was a priest and his philosophy mirrors that of theology and the church. Due to his influence, in 1638, he was invited by the Swedish government to design the Swedish public school system where he later authored required grade-level textbooks and timetables that teachers had to follow. The framework is still in force today in Sweden as outlined in Comenius’ Great Didactic. Today, the American system of kindergarten, elementary, middle and secondary schools, college and university is the exact counterpart of the Comenius pedagogy. Comenius’ notable “moonshot” was publishing the first children’s picture book in 1658, the Orbis Sensualium Pictus. Publishing pictures in textbooks to teach children was revolutionary at the time such that Orbis Sensualium Pictus became the most popular elementary textbook in Europe for two centuries (Klika, 1892). Today, in moonshot classes, students are creating virtual reality, augmented reality, mixed reality experiences that are responsive using Ai, blockchain and social media technologies. These are the new moonshot technologies as defined by the Moonshots in Education Research Lab.
In the last two years, just like Comenius, Swedish teachers in the Stanford Advanced Teacher Training Program offered through the Stanford School of Education have spent a significant portion of their time observing Dr. Woj’s nationally recognized and globally renowned Journalism program at the Palo Alto High School Media Arts Center. After observing a class of one hundred and twenty students in this iconic Woj Learning Space, Swedish teachers found some distinguishing elements of a moonshot learning class as designed by Dr. Woj herself. They found that the Swedish classroom has not changed since Comenius designed it. This conversation with Woj and Sweden is historical in that both Woj and Comenius were asked to shape Sweden’s educational process in a span of 405 years, what is the TRICK?
TRICK being a necessary ingredients of a K12 moonshot classroom, our education research team found that to date most, if any research connected to the pre-collegiate student as CEO of their learning focuses on post-secondary students only (Standish-Kuon and Rice (2002).
At Stanford University, the Designing Education Lab research scientists Dr. Sheri Sheppard, Dr. Helen L. Chen and Dr. Shannon Gilmartin are internationally renowned for their scientific research which has a focus on addressing an important gap in existing knowledge about entrepreneurship education for undergraduate engineering students. In the last three years, the Moonshots Design Labs taught at the Stanford d.school and local Silicon Valley High Schools such as Design Tech High School at Oracle and the Palo Alto Unified School District have built on some of the findings by the Stanford University’s Designing Education Lab. These have helped in the design of the Moonshots Mastery Transcript which Woj is advising on.
Dr. Wojcicki, being Silicon Valley’s matriarch, testifies the influence of technology and community while Comenius testified the influence of theology and church in education: Comenius being a priest, testified the influence of theology and church, but with reformed views and influences of some medieval understandings. Dr. Wojcicki, being Silicon Valley’s matriarch, testifies the influence of technology and community, but with reformed views and influences of the technological revolution. The pansophic principle is one of the important principles of Comenius: that everything must be taught to everyone, as a guiding basis for education, something like universal education (Characteristica universalis).
In the 1600s, Comenius taught Biblical sciences, practical theology, religion and languages at Johanneuum College in Herbor. He is recognized as the father of practical education in that a variety of projects were encouraged including narration, learned speech, music, fencing, horse riding, Jewish, French and Italian. This is why the Comenius principle is often compared to the Woj Way due to the whole child centered approach. However, there are fundamental differences in their frameworks. In 1892, Josip Klika described Comenius’ work as
“ Intended for a person before he/she grows up in body and begins his/her vocation”. On the other hand, Dr. Woj in her work, “Moonshots in Education: A Blended Learning Approach” as well as in her many keynote talks advises that “learning must be integrated into the real world.”
In his schools, Comenius found the source of knowledge in the Holy Script, as well as a permanent wish for the return of the Kingdom of Christ. He had very little emphasis on the scientific process and especially the ambiguous. Dr. Woj on the other hand is an advocate for students to be comfortable with failure and not focus on perfection. Comenius on the other hand wanted to have the curriculum organized perfectly and wanted to individually write all knowledge that ever was in one place. In contrast, Dr. Woj would choose collaboration as the attribute to use if someone were to accomplish a true moonshot.
In the Advanced Moonshot Teacher Training, Woj’s approach can also be seen as distinct from Comenius. Similarly, Dr. Esther Wojcicki at the University of California Berkeley keynote: The student as CEO of their life and learning. Dr. Woj remarked that young people today were three times as likely as their parents to be out of work and most employers were not able to find qualified candidates for entry level jobs (TedxBerkeley, 2017). She also lamented that education today is not aligned to a world that is constantly changing, adapting, and improving. The education system is struggling to keep up and the world needs a moonshot and there is a need to move away from the 17th century subject-teaching pedagogy which are still actively applied in the 21st century day-to-day school practice. In 1892, Nicholas Murray Butler in his book found that Comenius was important in education reform, however, he was not “an original mind.” In pertinent, Butler wrote:
“The place of Comenius in the history of education, therefore is one of commanding importance. He introduces and dominates the whole modern movement in the;field of elementary and secondary education. His relation to our present teaching is similar to that held by Copernicus and Newton toward modern science, and Bacon and Descartes toward modern philosophy. Yet, he was not, in a high sense, an original mind. But his spirit was essentially modern and remarkably receptive. He assimilated the ideas that were inspiring the new civilization and applied them to the school.” (Butler, p3)
If all curriculum was written down, children might be denied their moonshots. Dr. Woj threw the books away and created a new era of authentic moonshot blended learning: While there is a place for textbooks and a rigid curriculum in the classroom of the future, Comenius founded what we know as the factory model today, but with an emphasis on kindness just like Woj’s TRICK. The Woj framework is that moonshot teachers ought to create an environment that fosters trust and that trust is a two way street. For instance, her youngest daughter ,Anne recalls that she was 5 years old when she discovered her task in life to uncover the mysteries of DNA. What is fascinating about her New York times publication is that she recalls her mother, Dr. Woj, talking to her sister, Susan Woj about DNA. She became curious and joined the conversation asking questions about DNA. Anne later on founded the most impactful personal genetics company on the planet and achieved a moonshot in this space when the United States FDA for the first time approved personal genetics tests to be sold directly to the consumer. This alone dramatically shifted moonshots in health care and inspired fields in gene therapy, nanotechnology and pharmaceutical design. It inspired elementary and middle school students to think about their own moonshots such as the NanoTro. What is also different between Dr. Woj and Comenius is that, Woj threw her books away in the classroom and has her students focus on authentic projects integrated in their lives as lived.
To know more about the job of Dr. Woj raising her daughters, you can read this article by Forbes
The Woj Way Framework is a Fundamental Shift in Education Reform: It took 405 years!
Woj has not stopped looking at technologies that enhance and empower student learning. Moonshot Teachers all over the world are seeing the wisdom of TRICK and accomplishing their own moonshots. For the first time we are now seeing social robots in moonshot classrooms like Jibo and Google Assistant all of which first appeared in a high school classroom were Woj was training Moonshot teachers to be guides on the side rather than being a sage on the stage.
The first full fledged Virtual Reality School is named for Dr. Wojcicki. Dr. Wojcicki is also the first to define the concept of a self-driving classroom after 42 Silicon Valley went through the moonshots in education accreditation process.
In fact, world renowned ancient and new age Universities like The University of California at Berkeley , Stanford University, Rhode Island School of Design, Singularity University, Palo Alto University have either named Lectureships, Distinguished Scholarships, Distinguished Fellowships, Directorships, Mentorships as well as several Honorary Doctorates to acknowledge her contribution in education reform that prepares students for the fourth industrial revolution. The last major shift was over 405 years ago with Comenius contributions. To date due to her radically successful parenting and education philosophy: “The Woj Way” or Moonshots. The Woj philosophy has gained widespread adoption and is the most successful, structured, yet wildly flexible education framework that has withstood the test of a rapidly changing world while continuing to shape the future of the planet and beyond.
The Woj Way Toolkit and the Moonshot Mastery Transcript
Having looked at Comenius’ grand idea to have books as the sole authority. We can understand why memorizing for tests became a natural evolution in the last 405 years. Butler wrote the following about Comenius:
“His most grandiose idea was to publish a series of books that should contain all the knowledge in the world. The idea of an encyclopedia was, of course, not new. Comenius, however, wanted to feature the modern scientific discoveries that had taken place during the previous century, he wanted various specialists to write the parts dealing with their particular fields, and he wished the series to be used as the basic text in aspecial university, which he would later found. The plan was spectacular, and Comenius fell completely in love with it. If he had had his own way, he would have abandoned his other educational writings entirely and devoted himself to the assembling and co-ordinating of “universal knowledge. “ (pg14)
The blended learning approach applies some elements of the Comenian framework, but we see a radical shift in what Dr. Woj is proposing. Building on over three decades of research and experience, Dr. Woj coined the term “Moonshots in Education” as a fundamental shift on how we ought to think about education and how we ought to consider the mastery transcript. On the student as CEO of their life and learning keynote, the unit of analysis that Dr. Woj uses is the entrepreneurship frame in a pre-collegiate setting, even though this applies to the collegiate students as well. The programmatic context for product based learning for high school students has worked where students were given trust, respect, independence, collaboration and kindness (TRICK) to be successful. Consequently, Dr. Woj offers new insights as a revered teacher whose students include luminaries such as James Franco, Jeremy Lin, and Gady Epstein. As a renowned American educator, journalist, author and mother of three incredibly successful daughters is a recognized leader in the Blending Learning approach and integrating moonshot technologies in learning, it might be a wise to consider the mastery transcript. Below is the model that is still in beta.
