Is the cutting edge, cutting enough?

International schools are often on the cutting edge of technology use in their schools. In fact, when I think of innovative schools, I often think of international schools. When I read Will Richardson’s Bold Schools post, I thought international schools would definitely epitomize these bold school characteristics. By and large, international schools have fantastic budgets, smart students, eager parents, and supportive communities. Recently, Scott McLeod and I had the honor of hosting two, half day workshops at the American School of Bombay while attending ASB Un-Plugged 2012. When we asked administrators, teachers, technology coordinators, and parents of international schools (nearly 100) we found the following:

45% said their schools were authentic (students and teachers do real work for real purposes)

48% said their schools were innovative (risk-taking is encouraged)

59% said their students and teachers were literate (everyone is digitally-literate and -fluent)

51% said their schools were digital (every learner has a computer that is seamlessly integrated into the learning process)

38% said that learning in their schools is connected (learning is networked with the larger world)

These schools are held as pillars in their community… and they should be. Don’t get me wrong, they are doing amazingly great things. But, if we hold these qualities as being apt to describe progressive, forward thinking schools how can we get the most cutting edge schools to be more cutting edge?

When is awesome just not good enough?