The Innovative Learning Environments project is grappling with the question:
How can today’s schools be transformed so as to become environments of teaching and learning that makes individuals lifelong learners and prepare them for the 21st Century?
The project recognises a shift between the two projects
From SCHOOLING to LEARNING, and
From FUTURES THINKING to INNOVATION.
In the first chapter, The search for Innovative Learning Environments, Francisco Benavides, Hanna Dumont and David Istance put forward an argument that schools should be reinvented rather than reformed.
"… reforms have ultimately come up against a wall, or rather a ceiling, beyond which further progress seems impossible, leading increasing numbers of school administrators and educators to wonder whether schools do not need to be reformed but to be reinvented." Schooling for Tomorrow. OECD, 2006. pp.187-188.
They identify a reform agenda based on knowledge creation rather than transmission arguing that reinvention requires 3 key pillars:
Robust research on learning and teaching
Consideration of innovative learning experiences and environments, and
The broader educational and non-educational trends that set the context for the immediate and longer-term future.
In a later chapter, Research-based Innovation by Carl Bereiter and MarleneScardamalia the term fruitfulness is introduced as an approach to identifying approaches that are worth developing as new directions because of the promise they hold to make significant leaps forward beyond current outcomes.
The common approach in education is to use "effect size". This may be useful in identifying high yield strategies and "best" practice, but doesn't identify possible successful innovations. Fruitfulness does.
Late last year I was contacted by a consulting company who has been commissioned by the European Commission to identify a list of Good Practice for Fostering Creativity and Innovation in all sectors of society within EC countries.
Despite being located in Australia, they had come across my "extensive work on learning and innovation" (their words), and thought that I might be able to help them identify practices that I may have come across in the EU.
They are seeking practices and projects targeted at:
Stimulating innovative/creative behaviour in people, and
Promoting an innovative/creative approach to tackle problems in society.
I think they would probably be aware of the work of the places I visited on my Churchill Fellowship but I put forward some recommendations.
What captured my imagination though was the focus on creativity and innovation. It sounds much more promising than the Australian Government's Education Revloution.
Numa Numa was a 2003 pop song from a Maldovan group, O-Zone. The song became popular in Italy and Japan.
In December 2004 Gary Brolsma looked down a video cam and performed the song in his bedroom.
YouTube was registered in Febuary 2005 and by April that year anyone with a web cam could easily upload a video to the world wide web.
Gary version of Numa Numa is here:
People around the world joined in Gary's joy by learning the dance - including the raised eye brow, and lip synching the words. Now a YouTube search for Numa Numa shows results for 1,200,000!
Michael Wesch draws on Douglas Wolk in reflecting that the phenomena is not a parody of Brolsma but rather, through YouTube, a new cultural order is able to be created. Wesch sees that the Numa Numa phenomena is a celebration of new forms of empowerment, new forms of community and new forms of unimaginable possibilities.
Watching Jonas in his rendition of Numa Numa I'd have to agree. He is joining in spreading the happiness, with real audiences, connecting with others. This is part of Jonas' world, and should be part of how he learns.
The metaphor of "Learning the Dance" is a powerful one for me. As an educator I need to learn the dance that is learning today, and be a part of that dance that is learning in today's world - the world of Jonas.
Michael Wesch's video is below (including list of timing for sections in the 55 minute video):
0:00 Introduction, YouTube's Big Numbers 2:00 Numa Numa and the Celebration of Webcams 5:53 The Machine is Us/ing Us and the New Mediascape 12:16 Introducing our Research Team 12:56 Who is on YouTube? 13:25 What's on Youtube? Charlie Bit My Finger, Soulja Boy, etc. 17:04 5% of vids are personal vlogs addressed to the YouTube community, Why? 17:30 YouTube in context. The loss of community and "networked individualism" (Wellman) 18:41 Cultural Inversion: individualism and community 19:15 Understanding new forms of community through Participant Observation 21:18 YouTube as a medium for community 23:00 Our first vlogs 25:00 The webcam: Everybody is watching where nobody is ("context collapse") 26:05 Re-cognition and new forms of self-awareness (McLuhan) 27:58 The Anonymity of Watching YouTube: Haters and Lovers 29:53 Aesthetic Arrest 30:25 Connection without Constraint 32:35 Free Hugs: A hero for our mediated culture 34:02 YouTube Drama: Striving for popularity 34:55 An early star: emokid21ohio 36:55 YouTube's Anthenticity Crisis: the story of LonelyGirl15 39:50 Reflections on Authenticity 41:54 Gaming the system / Exposing the System 43:37 Seriously Playful Participatory Media Culture (featuring Us by blimvisible: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_yxHKg... 47:32 Networked Production: The Collab. MadV's "The Message" and the message of YouTube 49:29 Poem: The Little Glass Dot, The Eyes of the World 51:15 Conclusion by bnessel1973 52:50 Dedication and Credits (Our Numa Numa dance)
Today I started reading Charles Leadbeater's recent book, WE-THINK: Mass innovation, not mass production. It's shaping up to be a thought provoking book. Charles Leadbeater, a researcher with the London think-tank Demos, is one of the leading thinkers about innovation and creativity.
Leadbeater was
early to notice the rise of "amateur innovation" -- great ideas from outside the traditional walls, from people who suddenly have the tools to collaborate, innovate and make their expertise known.
The sharing can be for good, but also brings with it dilemmas.
We-think explores the new phenomenon of mass creativity exemplified by web sites such as YouTube, Wikipedia and MySpace. The book ... argues that participation, rather than consumption or production, will be the key organizing idea of future society.
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