Eddie Obeng: Smart failure for a fast-changing world“This is what happened to us in the 21st century — someone changed the rules about how our world works,” says Obeng in this energetic talk. “The way to successfully run a business, an organization, even a country has been deleted. Flipped! There’s a completely new set of rules in operation … My simple idea is that the real 21st century around us isn’t so obvious to us, so instead we spend our time responding rationally to a world we understand but which no longer exists.”

In the past 40 years, the world’s population has doubled. Meanwhile, large tracts of people have settled in cities, and the Internet has greatly deepened the density of interaction among us. “The pace of change overtakes the pace of learning,” says Obeng. And yet, most institutions are horribly unprepared to handle rapid shifts. As Obeng explains, “You have to wait all the way for a cycle to fail before you can say, ‘There’s something wrong’ … We solve last year’s problems without thinking about the future.”

It is this challenge that inspired Obeng to found the virtual business school Pentacle. The school focuses on teaching people how to think and innovate in a world where change is the only constant. The key: what Obeng calls “smart failure.” In other words, rewarding those who trailblaze new approaches — even if they don’t work out — as opposed to those who trod along well-worn paths.

To hear more about Obeng’s philosophy, watch his fascinating talk. (Or see several of Obeng’s lessons on Pentacle’s YouTube channel.) Below, take a look at seven other TED speakers who founded schools with bold ideas for how to better prepare individuals for our ever-shifting world.

Gever Tulley: Life lessons through tinkeringGever Tulley: Life lessons through tinkering Gever Tulley is the founder of the Tinkering School, where students are given the materials, tools and guidance to let their creativity run wild. In this talk from TED2009, Tulley shows photos of students building unique boats, bridges and roller coasters in a curriculum that stresses the ability to make things.

Sugata Mitra: Build a School in the CloudSugata Mitra: Build a School in the Cloud At TED2013, education innovator Sugata Mitra accepted the TED Prize, offering up the idea for a School in the Cloud. A learning lab in India where kids are free to explore big questions on their own online, the school won’t have teachers in a traditional sense. Instead, it will use “the granny cloud,” a network of retired teachers who will cheer learners on.

Shukla Bose: Teaching one child at a timeShukla Bose: Teaching one child at a time Two million people in Bangalore live in slums, and the majority of children there will never attend school. In this talk from TEDIndia in 2009, Shukla Bose describes her impetus for founding the Parikrma Humanity Foundation, a nonprofit that runs four schools for poor children, giving them chances they might never had had without an education.

John Hardy: My green school dreamJohn Hardy: My green school dream In this talk from TEDGlobal 2010, John Hardy jokes that Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth ruined his life. The documentary inspired him to start the Green School in Bali. While the main school building is open-air and built from bamboo, the curriculum teaches students to build, garden and create.

Bunker Roy: Learning from a barefoot movementBunker Roy: Learning from a barefoot movement Bunker Roy attended a college that was expensive — and elitist. In this talk from TEDGlobal 2011, Roy describes how spending time in an Indian village, where poverty was rampant, changed the course of his life and led him to found Barefoot College. Unlike a traditional school, Barefoot College is only for the poor, and teaches rural men and women to tap into their innate intelligence and become engineers, doctors or artisans.

Geoff Mulgan: A short intro to the Studio SchoolGeoff Mulgan: A short intro to the Studio School Far too many teenagers are bored with school. And when they finally receive their diploma, employers complain that students often aren’t prepared for success in the workplace. In this talk from TEDGlobal 2011, social innovator Geoff Mulgan describes a new approach — The Studio School — which focuses on developing student’s creativity by having them work on practical projects rather than simply listening to lectures.

Kakenya Ntaiya: A girl who demanded schoolKakenya Ntaiya: A girl who demanded school Kakenya Ntaiya runs a very unusual school in her Maasai village — a school for girls. In this powerful talk from TEDxMidAtlantic, she shares how she started the school. It not only involved making a deal with her father to go through the ritual of female circumcision in order to continue to high school, but then appealing to her village elders to get their approval to go to college.

This post was originally written in October of 2012, to accompany Eddie Obeng’s talk from TEDGlobal 2012. It was updated in May of 2013 for TED’s Education Week, in the lead up to TED Talks Education.

With just over a month to go before the 2012 presidential election in the US, eyes around the world are on the contest between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney. The election may well come down to a few key issues. So what matters most to Americans? The TED Blog read this Gallup poll from late July on issues that citizens want the next president to prioritize. Conveniently, these are topics that speakers often address on the TED stage. So, every week until the election, we’ll bring you a playlist focusing on one of the top-rated issues.

Among the most important questions in the upcoming election is, “How can we improve the nation’s public schools?” — 83 percent indicated that improving schools is “very important” or “extremely important.”

To get you thinking, talking and voting, here are 10 talks from speakers with some very big ideas about how to reshape our school environments.

Sir Ken Robinson: Bring on the learning revolution!
Sir Ken Robinson gave the most watched TEDTalk of all time at TED2006, “Schools kill creativity.” In this followup four years later, Robinson shares how schools should approach the education process — with personalized learning, where students are encouraged to explore their own interests and talents.

Emily Pilloton: Teaching design for change
Education challenges can be met with design solutions, says Emily Pilloton. In one of rural North Carolina’s poorest counties, she created Studio H, a modernized, humanitarian shop class that’s “growing creative capital within the next generation.” She shares her story at TEDGlobal 2010, showing how a whole community was transformed by a little design thinking.

Stephen Ritz: A teacher growing green in the South Bronx
Inveterate educator Stephen Ritz saw his students getting more unhealthy by the year, so sprang into action and created The Green Bronx Machine. At TEDxManhattan, he makes it clear — a passionate teacher and a fresh idea can improve kids’ physical and emotional well-being, not to mention their prospects for the future.

Daphne Koller: What we’re learning from online education
Universities should not be closed-door institutions, says Daphne Koller. At TEDGlobal 2012, Koller explained Coursera, a website where anyone can take real college courses for free. But while providing a unique service, Coursera also has a larger purpose — mining a wealth of data about how students learn.

Ann Cooper talks school lunches
It isn’t only in the classroom that students are struggling; in the lunchroom, there’s a shortage of healthy, sustainable things to eat. School meals are an opportunity to nourish and to educate, says food activist Ann Cooper, and we need to seize it now. (Read the TED Blog’s Q&A with Martha Payne, who blogs her school lunches.)

Taylor Mali: What teachers make
This must-see three minute slam poetry piece tells it like it is – teachers are undervalued in every sense of the word. At the Bowery Poetry Club, Taylor Mali raises his voice in protest and pays homage to the educators who make a daily difference.

Dan Meyer: Math class needs a makeover
No problem worth solving comes in a simple formula, says math teacher Dan Meyer. He insists that conversation is key, and that real-world thinking skills require the kind of complexity not offered in most textbooks. At TEDxNYED, he shows how math can be “the vocabulary for your own intuition.”

Diana Laufenberg: How to learn? From mistakes
Diana Laufenberg knows that her students aren’t going to love American history as much as she does — unless she gets them involved, making movies and holding mock elections. At TEDxMidAtlantic, she praises an approach to learning that doesn’t just ask for right answers.

Shimon Schocken: The self-organizing computer course
Great educators don’t have to teach — they can provide a context for self-guided learning. Shimon Schocken and Noam Nisan noticed that their computer science students didn’t have the most basic understanding of how computers work. So they developed a course for students to build a functioning computer, from the ground up. The two put the course online — giving away the tools, simulators, chip specifications and other building blocks — and were surprised that thousands jumped at the opportunity to learn.

Ken Robinson: Changing education paradigms
With the help of RSA Animate’s vivid illustration, education visionary Sir Ken Robinson explains the industrial-strength problems with our model of education. We are anesthetizing our children through their schooling, he warns, and it’s imperative that we update immediately.