Design Tech High School at Oracle

August is in the books, so it's no longer back-to-school season. It's we-are-in-school season. There have been so many great things about welcoming students back-to-school, but one of the best is the whiteboard art that keeps showing up on campus. Dry erase marker is an under-appreciated medium. Newell Brands there is a big opportunity for you to move the expo marker from classroom stalwart to an artist's tool of choice; just let us know and we can help. Our students are "on board".

It's so delicious when empathy, design, and Koi Fish come together to make a fantastic cookie. This week, our Asian Culture Club welcomed new students to campus with Koi Fish cookies. The ACC 3-d printed the cookie cutter in our Design Realization Garage, baked and decorated the cookies, and then showed up to school with them. This was neither assignment nor ask; it was older students remembering what it feels like to be a new student and then doing something nice for them. It was truly our mission in action and an inspiration for all of us. Our school year is off to a great start, and we hope yours is too.

So you know those movies where they are always switching between flashbacks and present day, blurring the timeline of events. Here is our version of that. 🎓 We are celebrating back to school with some graduation pictures from members of the class of 2024 and their older siblings. 🎂 We turn 10 years old this year, so we are going to be blurring our timelines a lot for the next 10 months. We will appreciate where we are right now, but keep our eyes on the future. Just like we do with our students. Ryan Yee, Jason Yee, Marius and Mattias, Ken M.

Sounds like this was truly a win-win situation. We love it when our students get to learn design thinking in the classroom and then put their knowledge into action in the workplace. Thanks for a great collaboration.

Thank you Colleen Cassity for this great profile on Alexander Lederman and the partnership we have with the Oracle education foundation. It's so exciting to see the future unfold for our graduates. Like we say, "it's not about the next 4 years, it's about the next 40 years." So like you said, let's keep celebrating a future full of hope, inspiration, and endless possibilities.

Great work class of 2024; this is creative, fun, inspires joy, and has an element of "how did they do that?" We'll miss you, and you've redefined the idea of a sr. prank; this is what you do, make people rethink their assumptions. Thanks for creating a work of art for us to remember you by.

Lots of great food for thought provided by this panel at NewSchools Summit last week. It was great to hear Sam provide the student perspective on A.I. and learning how it can unlock a student's creativity. It's clear that schools need to give students access to A.I. tools to help make sure that they know how to navigate their future, because A.I. will be a part of it. Also, as Alex pointed out, we need to have some sense of urgency around student access because we are already seeing the digital divide emerge between students who attend schools where A.I. is viewed as a foundation for a learning journey for the community and places where students are scared to use A.I. because the conversation is primarily about A.I. and cheating. Sam's work in creating with A.I. while pursuing his innovation diploma clearly shows what is possible when A.I. is a learning journey. We were also particularly excited to hear Sam talk about how learning design thinking has given him a framework for approaching A.I. and how there is still more work to be done in preparing students for this bold new future. Thank you to Alexandra Bernadotte for moderating a great panel with Sam Cheng from Design Tech @ Oracle and Jimmy Fisher.

We’re deep into producing the FY24 Oracle Social Impact Report, capturing images worth a thousand words. Here’s one we got on Monday evening of d.tech, glowing from the inside, out. It’s the outer radiance that has its roots in the wonderfully healthy system on the inside. That’s Design Tech High School at Oracle. #education #designthinking #socialimpact

Can't wait to learn from Design Tech junior Sam Cheng. Sam is on the panel "From AI Hype to Hope: Student Visions for the Future of Learning" at the New Schools Venture Fund Summit. It's always great to see our students engage in these important conversations. Go Sam!

Thanks to our board chair Betsy (Elizabeth) Corcoran for kicking off our A.I. event with the San Mateo County Office of Education. This technology is different from past technological breakthroughs, so we need to approach it differently. Schools need to be about more than education, we need to be about human development. A.I. is not a tool to just help us get better at our jobs. A.I. forces us to ask fundamental questions about the purpose of our jobs. Thanks also to Erik Burmeister, Kip Glazer, Morgan Vien, and Nancy Magee, and Ken M. for sharing your wisdom on this journey.