Innovation and the curriculum NCSL 120607

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Innovation and the curriculumNCSL 12/06/07

• Tim Rudd
• Tim.Rudd_at_futurelab.org.uk
• www.futurelab.org.uk

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Overview

• Background
• Why innovate
• Key themes and principles
• Some examples

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Why Innovate 1

• Within education innovation its the movement
  toward an educational vision through the
  development of new practices or tools that lead
  to better learning and teaching
• Personalisation

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Personalisation

• PL Should be an empowering concept subjects not
  objects
• Increased choice and voice of the
  learner/consumer
• Potentially leading to significant systemic
  reform of education individual learning
  pathways
• Less prescription - more active dialogue
• Learner as active (not passive) agent/co-author
  of educational script focus on content creation
  not regurgitation
• Changed relationships between teachers/tutors and
  learners

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The personalisation continuum?
Incremental changes. Adapt to change. Underlying
organisation unchanged
New organising principles emerge
Location and educational modes of delivery change
Learning through exploration
ICT allows learners deeper into curriculum
learner led choices start to emerge
Increased options for learners content and
approach
Teacher role as mentor/coach
deep PL system transformation
shallow PL mass customisation
Peer to peer mentoring
ICT enables evidence based picture of learning
needs
Choices for learners still largely focussed
around navigation of existing content
Focus on learning skills not content
New learning networks emerge. New model of
education
Learners voice heard and embedded begin to
direct their learning
ICT as tool to reduce transaction costs
different content and more collaboration
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Why Innovate 2

• Learner Voice
• Learner empowerment
• Active and responsible learners
• Appropriate 21st century skills
• Funds of knowledge

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Fountaineers

• A project to co-design and develop an interactive
  and programmable object (intelligent water
  fountain) to be constructed within the school
  grounds of a primary school.
• The design of the artefact and the management of
  its use thereafter is to be owned and led by
  learners
• Fountaineers involves a whole primary school in
  the co-design of an interactive, programmable
  water fountain.
• The project will explore different ways of
  organising learning, create alternative
  educational experiences and enable learner voice

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Why Innovate 3

• Re-professionalisation of teachers/re-intellectual
  isation of the workforce

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• A learning journey that has thrown up
  excitement, uncertainty, frustration,
  possibility, chinks of light and unadulterated
  terror! One certainty, however, is that teaching
  and learning will never be the same again.
• State of being in the fog - out of our comfort
  zone and we didnt like it one bit.
• Children having a great time - bursting with
  enthusiasm and thoughts crucial turning point
• Maybe this is what its really about child
  centred education where we let go of complete
  classroom autonomy - taking it where the children
  are fired up and enthusiastic to go.

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Enquiring Mindswww.enquiringminds.org.uk

• Curriculum innovation project
• Develop activities and resources for children and
  teachers enabling young people to act not simply
  as recipients of knowledge, but its creators
• Handbook and forthcoming online guide/tools
• Exploratree

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Teachers and Innovations Programme

• Investigating the capacity of teachers to
  innovate in their use of digital technologies

• institutional

• Develop (radical) new practices
• Be creative in use of digital technologies
• Develop and apply new approaches to teaching,
  learning, using of resources and links outside
  the classroom
• Respond to new possibilities and new problems

• Opportunities
• Motivations
• Encouragement
• Barriers

• local

• national

• personal

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• Desk based and background research on
  resistances, enablers and examples
• Models and tools for innovation/Innovation
  resources
• Map of Innovation
• Collecting examples of innovative practice
• Showcasing innovative practice
• Highlighting similarities and differences in
  practice
• Network of Innovation
• Annual Conference 30/31 October
• CFI Innovative tools for teachers

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Create-a-scape

• www.createascape.org.uk
• Freely available GPS, PDA, Mediascape authoring
  tool
• (audio, visual, now video overlays onto real
  world content repository and tagging)

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Why innovate 4

• Society has changed
• Education still predominantly C19 model

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New technologies new possibilities

• Clash between technologies to change how, where
  and who we learn from
• Mobile, outside, informal, non formal, learning
  in and from environment, alternative spaces
• More specific BSF, Primary re-design wheres
  the educational vision, innovation?

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Use and utility of new

• Clash between use of digital technologies inside
  and outside
• Tools to create, edit, share, collaborate and
  publish more push, less pull
• Emphasis on content creation emotionally and
  experientially different experience
• Third wave outside implementation,
  expansion/embedding where is the
  transformational 3rd wave? In schools?

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New directions? Power Tools2.0?
Chat
VoIP
Mailing Lists
Flickr
Instant Messaging
Games
Photos
Screen Sharing
Media Sharing
Videos
Social Networking
Tagging
Bookmarks
Feeds
Creative software
Screencasts
Blog Search
Wikis
Virtual reality
Weblogs
Pod-casts
Film making
Bulletin boards
Creative software
Michelle Selinger
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Network Logic?

• Are learners already mobilising social capital
  and the connectedness of society?
• Metaphor and reality of the network seen as
  epitomising the social, economic and
  technological changes of the last 30 years
• Networks are the most important organisational
  form of our time. By harnessing network logic,
  the ways we view the world and the tools we use
  for navigating and understanding it, will change
  significantly (Demos).
• Concept of the network society calls into
  question what it means to be educated today
  what new skills, ways of working and learning
  will be required

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Questions/discussion

• Where are biggest opportunities for innovation?
• What are the biggest barriers?
• Examples?