The annual Big Ideas Fest is an extraordinary immersion into collaboration and design that focuses on transformational change in K-20 education. Creative doers and thinkers from diverse levels of education gather to learn from and share with each other. Breaking down silos and empowering champions, Big Ideas Fest places learning at the front and center of all that we do. The participants are inspirational. The work is dynamic. And the results are revolutionary.

Big Ideas Fest believes answers and innovation are all around us. The event gathers top minds to share their work and ideas in an environment that encourages risk-taking and overall imagining of the impossible.

Big Ideas Fest's unique format includes RapidFire talks from leading innovators; interactive networking with education's movers and shakers; and Action Collab design-thinking labs that engage groups to brainstorm, prototype, and ultimately create scaleable solutions to cumbersome issues in education.

Watch Rapid Fire and Keynote presentations on the Big Ideas Fest YouTube Channel.

ISKME’s Action Collabs are dynamic workshops that use a design-thinking framework to innovate new ideas with actionable next steps. Collaboration and ideation happen in four stages: research, design, prototype, and scale and spread. Throughout the experience, participants engage in improv activities (the improvisational method of achieving cooperation) to accelerate meaningful collaboration that results in tangible action plans.

Action Collabs access groups' collective brainpower by focusing creativity and structuring brainstorming in a unique method that leads to new thinking and solutions. An Action Collab can focus on detailed projects such as lesson and curriculum creation or on larger systems thinking applied to school and districts.

Action Collabs are an innovative way to:
•    Tackle a familiar challenge from a new angle.
•    Spark strategic thinking around a new initiative.
•    Discover partnerships waiting to happen.

ISKME offers a range of Action Collab workshops that vary in audience, length, and focus:

• Intensive Action Collab: Focus on a group's specific Design Challenge
• Basic Action Collab: Focused on a group's specific Design Challenge
• Process Action Collab: Learn the standard framework of the Action Collab process
• Team Building Action Collab: Learn new tools for collaboration and field-building
• Action Collab Module: Inserted into a larger event and focused on a group's specific Design Challenge or the standard framework of the Action Collab process
• Action Collab Facilitator Training: Training certifies Action Collab Facilitators
• Action Collab for Kids: Focused on a group of younger learners' Design Challenge

To bring a customized Action Collab to your organization, please contact ISKME’s Director of Training & Design, This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

ISKME Action Collab Clients:

AgroKnow

Bay Area Society for Organizational Learning

Big Ideas Fest

Danish Ministry of Education

Lumina Foundation's College Productivity Initiative

MDC hosts Developmental Education Initiative

National League of Cities hosts Communities Learning in Partnership

The Shuttleworth Foundation

The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation hosts OER 2011: The Impact of Open on Teaching and Learning