Why do we want innovation in education? What do we want to transform? Which changes do we want to achieve? What visionary practices can innovators bring for the future of education?
Tag: innovation
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Why will Europe be the leading force for innovation in education?
Creative thinking in the classroom based on Hanoch Piven’s work – www.pivenworld.com -
MOOCs mania: a speculative bubble?
Results of a survey (Les usages pédagogiques du numérique) by the French Ministry of Education A few days ago, I participated in a workshop at the DLD Festival in Tel Aviv about the “business model of online education” at the invitation of the World Economic Forum. The same day, the French Ministry of Education released the results of a survey that showed that only 5% of French students and less than 20% of their teachers knew precisely what it was about.
How can you think of a business model for MOOCs when your potential users don’t know what they are about?
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Entrepreneurial excellence in school
New Millennium Learners Last week, Nelie Kroes, Vice-President of the European Commission, launched “the Startup Manifesto campaign for entrepreneurial excellence” and we are all invited to sign it.
Among the various recommendations that have been made to sustain economic growth, two of them directly concern the education world:
– Make teachers digitally confident and competent to rise to the challenge.
– Teach our children the principles, processes and the passion for entrepreneurship from a young age.
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Education entrepreneurs: more ed or more tech?
Education entrepreneurs In recent months, Europe has seen a flurry of initiatives aimed at fostering greater web talent in Europe and stimulating web entrepreneurship. In her blog, Neelie Kroes, Vice-President of the European Commission, continuously celebrates and encourages Europe’s tech and web entrepreneurs, as: “people following their dreams and creating their own companies, coming up with ideas and products with the potential to change the way we live, work, play, communicate and collaborate.”
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I am an education entrepreneur. I work in a garage near you.
The changes we are envisioning for the classroom may take place at this very moment, in a garage near us, and no longer in the Ministry of Education offices.
The notion of “education entrepreneur” challenges our understanding of an education system, ruled by core curriculum standards and a cohort of dedicated civil servants that decide on behalf of the teachers, students and families what is good to be taught in the classroom and how it should be taught.
In recent years, we have seen acclaimed professors jumping from their “academic pedestal” and into to the start-up world. Udacity – one of the reference points for MOOCs –was cofounded by a research professor at Stanford University. So was Coursera. We could read these stories as fairy tales where the professor we once knew was almost magically transformed into a CEO. But fairy tales aren’t real.
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MOOCS: from Alice in Wonderland to Harry Potter
No time to say hello, goodbye MOOCs from a historical – and magical – perspective
“No time to say hello, goodbye”. Innovators in education are these days like the white rabbit in Alice’s adventures in Wonderland: they jump from one innovation to the other and have no time to look backwards to validate their ideas and find inspiration from the past.
Let’s take the example of MOOCs, these “massive open online courses” that are presented as “the” solution for opening up education to all. We used to count students by the tens or hundreds in classrooms or amphitheatres. We are now designing a universal classroom with hundreds of thousands – perhaps millions – of students. Universities, students, professors, business angels, and policy makers have embarked on an adventure that should transform the way we learn and the way we teach.
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No more classrooms or more democracy?
Vittra school Stockholm
I rediscovered a very interesting study commissioned in the UK by the DfES – Classroom of the Future. It argues that a pleasant and comfortable environment for learning will stimulate children’s imaginations. Everyone will share this view even if most of our schools are very far from offering such architectural and design features. Very interestingly, the report linked the delivery of an effective education, which makes use of all the possibilities of the Information Age, to the way the school buildings reflect advances in technology (1).
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Skills mismatch vs. democratic imbalance
Photo by Xin Li 88
Youth unemployment is one of the most serious challenges we face. In Spain, where I live, more than 50% of young people are unemployed. More than 32% are early school leavers. More than 25% live below the poverty line. The threat of a lost generation is much more acute than the risk of the Spanish banking system collapsing.
