PierreAntoine Ullmo

Tag: innovative education

  • You have said “INNOVATE IN EDUCATION”?

    Innovation in education is often seen as a commitment at improving the quality of education.

    But what does it mean to educate?

    To this essential question, the French geneticist and humanist Albert Jacquard answers “E-ducere” that is to say “to awaken the appetite, to create needs, to raise questions”. “Education must be lived as a commitment in the collective game where men and women – (Jacquard called them“lucid men”) – build themselves mutually.”

    albert jacquard

    This vision of education takes us far away from the classroom where it usually stays and brings new perspectives to innovators in education.

    The challenge is to (re)think of education as a global solution to meet the following three objectives:

    • “Awakening the appetite” – thanks to communication and awareness-raising
    •  “Creating needs” – applying participatory methodology and design thinking
    •  “Raising questions” – with user-generated contents

    Innovation in education in this context means much more than “anyone, anywhere, anytime”.

    Education is a dialogue, an innovative form of communication that must favor the creative and constructive appropriation by ALL the inhabitants of the planet and above all by the younger generations of ALL the themes vital to our future.

    Education relies in this new context on a “pedagogy of the question” and not on prefabricated answers or ready to use technology with pre-existing contents.

    Education requires the participation of all in the construction of the common good.

    Education is thus the means of sensitizing and provoking the participation of the greatest number on each of the subjects that condition the quality of our lives and our “living together”.

    Education is therefore a tool of social transformation enabling individuals, starting with the youngest, to become aware of problems that are essential to them, to move forward with behavioral changes and to influence the behavior of the community in which they live.

    Innovators in education have no other choice than to contribute to this social transformation. Are they aware of it?

  • Listening to Puttnam

    Lord David Puttnam and some OEC finalists © P.A.U. Education
    Hanoch Piven, Lord David Puttnam and Olivier Verhaeghe, CEO of Talkso, one of the OEC finalists.
    © P.A.U. Education

    I had the chance to spend some time last week with Lord David Puttnam, chair of our Open Education Challenge jury. Lord Puttnam is one of the most fascinating people you could ever hope to meet. He spent thirty years producing some of the best films of our lives, and then abruptly reinvented himself as an education expert. As education itself is also in a phase of reinvention, it is worth listening to him. (more…)

  • Teach to change the world

    Going to school to change the world
    Going to school to change the world

    Education innovators – among them many teachers – have the ability to reinvent the art of teaching in the classroom.

    Yishay Mor in his new book talks about teaching as a design practice that can change the world. The French daily ‘Le Monde’ just published an inspiring portrait of a young teacher who wanted to change his class… and the world. This story makes you believe in the inspirational dimension of teaching. (more…)

  • Ask provocative questions to change education

    It is time for change education.
    It is time for change in education.

    Boosting innovation in education was one of the main objectives of the first Erasmus+ call for proposals that has just been published.

    But what do we mean by innovation in education? And what are the keys to making innovation in education possible?

    Innovation in education is often considered as the development of curricula that will provide students with “the knowledge and skills necessary for a knowledge and entrepreneurial society.”  This is the core of the Knowledge Triangle designed by the EIT (European Institute of Innovation and Technology).

    (more…)

  • Education is a special need

     

    The teacher as a lighthouse
    The teacher as a lighthouse

    I just came back from spending a few days with Yaacov Hecht  and had the chance to get inspired by his vision and energy. In his book, Democratic Education: A Beginning of a Story, he described himself as “dyslectic and dysgraphic with average academic capabilities”. He writes: “When I began first grade, it became evident to me that I could not learn to read and write”.

    How can he be a leading visionary in education if he doesn’t read or write adequately?  It is maybe – surely? – that he transformed his “special needs” into “special skills”.

    (more…)