Ben Owens discusses his non-profit "Open Way Learning" and the book he co-authored - Open Up, Education! - 339

<p></p> <p></p> <p></p> <p>Ben Owens discusses his non-profit "Open Way Learning" and the book he co-authored - Open Up, Education! How Open Way Learning Can Transform Schools. This is episode 339 of Teaching Learning Leading K12, an audio podcast.</p> <p>Ben Owens is an education strategist and coach with experience helping schools create the cultural conditions that allow authentic, localized innovation to thrive in their own learning communities. He specializes in working with schools to retool their approach to collaboration and the free exchange of ideas and resources by applying the core elements of the open source movement - one of the primary drivers fueling our innovation economy. This “Open Way Learning” approach allows teams to develop, remix, adapt, and sustain a culture of authentic innovation that nimbly responds to the just-in-time needs of each student. Such innovative approaches include competency-based learning, project-based learning, distributed leadership, design thinking, true personalized learning, and high-quality STEM teaching & learning - all implemented with fidelity and sustained for the long term because they are rooted in the DNA of a school’s culture (instead of being short lived fads).</p> <p>As an engineer who spent a 20-year career in manufacturing locations across the US, Ben saw first-hand the essential need to rethink student success so that it was less focused on siloed curriculum and test scores and more focused on the skills, knowledge, and dispositions needed for students to thrive in a rapidly changing world. He left the corporate world in 2007 to do something about this by becoming a public school teacher in Southern Appalachia. Ben taught physics and math for 11 years at <a href='https://www.tricountyearlycollege.org/'>Tri-County Early College</a> and in that role was able to work with a dynamic team of peers to craft and scale an engaging approach to student-centered teaching and learning that blurs the lines between what happens in school and what happens in