31 (More) Days of #BIF7 - Day 20

31 (More) Days of #BIF7 - Day 20 - Dennis Littky

I have to be honest. When Dennis Littky walked across the stage to speak at BIF-7, I was a little scared. The signifiers perplexed me. He looked happily crazy, and had on tie-dye shoes of sorts. I could only think, "here comes a seriously worked-up ex-hippie."

But then he started talking about kids and school and it became evident immediately that he was committed to bringing dramatic change to education. At one point, he pulled out all these little pieces of paper and started tossing them into the air. Every 12 seconds, he related, a kid drops out of school. 9,600 drop out every 24 hours.

"Something's not right about that," he said.

The good news is that Littky created an organization to help stem the tide of dropouts by "encouraging, inciting and effecting change in the U.S. educational system." The Big Picture Company was founded in 1995 and now has 72 high-schools across the country. Littky is now also involved with collegiate education reform via a College Unbound collaboration with Big Picture Learning.

Note: During his BIF-7 talk, Dennis mentioned that he's always looking for e-mentors for students and encouraged anyone interested to tweet at him @dennis_littky and let him know.

Additional information:
http://www.bigpicture.org/

Dennis Littky on Twitter:
@dennis_littky

BIF Profile Page
http://businessinnovationfactory.com/iss/innovators/dennis-littky

This is part of my 31 (More) Days of #BIF7 blog series.

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