30-31 October 2007
INMARSAT, London

This conference explored the conditions, tools and strategies that can support innovation in education.

Below, Leila Walker, Senior Researcher at Futurelab, summarises some of the main issues raised by the speakers at this event (NB see also the presentations section for transcripts, audio recordings and PowerPoints).

Dan Sutch
Learning Researcher, Futurelab
Innovations3

Dan opened the conference with a barrage of definitions on what innovation actually means. An integral definition for the conference was one that described the importance of end-user innovation:

“…an agent develops an innovation for their own (personal or in-house) use because existing products do not meet their needs.”

The growth of the knowledge society and the pervasiveness of the technology represent a major challenge and a major opportunity for educators. Delegates were asked to complete each side of a story cube in an attempt to tease out how ideas can be put into successful practice. Six questions in total were addressed:

• What are you addressing/aiming to solve?
• What does success look like?
• What changes in practice are needed?
• What are the key resistances?
• What are the key actions to reducing resistance?
• What ‘black box’ would you use to help?

Major hurdles/resistances faced by practitioners wishing to innovate in their classrooms were identified -each of one requiring acknowledgement and action if innovation is to have any chance of occurring:

• risk
• relationships
• ownership
• professional learning
• professional identity
• ownership
• change management
• tools and resources (including time).

A number of useful tools already available to educators for free were shared with the delegates:

www.slideshare.net
www.yackpack.com
www.nextgenteachers.com
www.diigo.com

Donald Clark
Board member of UfI, Director of Strategy LINE Communications, Director of Caspian Learning
NEW theories and OLD practice

Donald raised concerns about the lack of innovation in schools. He described classrooms as boxes – boxes where innovation is limited. With double the money been given to education during this Labour government there was little evidence to show that much improvement had been realised – interventions had not been cost-effective.

So where did Donald feel education was getting it wrong?

• wasted learning time - pupils still waiting for things to happen to them
• cognitive overload – too much knowledge given, pupils take little in and this in turn turns them off learning
• death of the compliant learner – pupils no longer want to sit in boxes and have things done to them
• lack of professional learning – teachers were not up to date with educational research literature
• pedagogy has not changed to reflect new learning experiences, for example, use of technology.

So what did Donald feel education should do to improve pupil outcomes?

• institutional reform – innovation can not be driven from inside the classroom, need to look outside
• review learning spaces – with new technologies, lessons need not take place at set times, in set places with your local educator
• expert educators – new technologies allow all learners access to the best educators
• new pedagogy – teaching and learning practice needs to be led by the advance of new technologies.

Trevor Baylis OBE
Chairman, Trevor Baylis Brands plc
Why invent?

Trevor shared his hopes for education to become a fertile space where innovation and invention is commonplace. Through his experience as a very successful inventor, he explained the important role inventors have to play in society. During his early years as an inventor, Trevor worked on a range of products for the disabled called Orange Aids. This work was inspired by his own experience as a stunt man where he saw many of his contemporaries disabled from tragic stunts. In the early 1990s Trevor took his invention of the wind-up radio to Africa – where it was used to inform remote areas of the continent about the dangers of AIDS. He was awarded an OBE for his services to Africa in 1997.

Taking an idea through to a final product is full of difficulties – none more so than inventors protecting their intellectual property. In setting up Trevor Baylis Brands PLC, Trevor provides a service for inventors helping them develop their ideas, protecting their ideas and seeing their ideas through to product. In his mission to encourage the next generation of innovators and inventors, he is looking for partnerships so that his dream of an Academy for Inventors may be realised. Meanwhile, Trevor continues to invent – his latest product is entitled ‘Electric Shoes’.

Professor Lizbeth Goodman
Founder and Director of SMARTlab
Inventive play: technology-enhanced learning and gaming tools that enable community engagement and communication

Lizbeth Goodman is Director of the SMARTlab Digital Media Institute and Magic Gamelab at UEL. Her main field of speciality is the creation of learning games developed WITH, not only for, people with disabilities and other communities of ‘non-standard gamers’, including children and young people around the world.

She led the evaluation of the Microsoft Community Affairs Clubtech educational technology and games project (which has reached four million disadvantaged young people to date). Learning from the US Clubtechs, Lizbeth plans to open the first Clubtech UK in the East End of London in the near future. These clubs will be used as a place where disadvantaged young people can engage with new technologies – gaining new experiences as well as new knowledge, skills and competencies from which they may be able to benefit from.

As the Director of the Trust Project for children in hospital, Lizbeth and her team have used gaming and haptics to enhance the physical wellbeing and learning of those with limited physical ability. Lizbeth founded the Trust Project in 2001 and has helped it to grow and find sponsorship (with BBC R&D, Singapore Gamelab, NYU, The Carl Sagan Trust and Children’s Health Fund et al) in many cultures over the years.

She is also founder and Director of the SafetyNET Project and global NGO - which provides skills training for women and children survivors of domestic abuse.

Lizbeth is passionate that to enable some of our more innovative ideas to be taken up, we must work within ‘circles of trust’ – working together, sharing skills and competencies. Without this circle of trust many of her ideas would never have reached a stage where any potential funders would have considered adding their financial support.

Dan Sutch
Summary and overview of workshop sessions from Day 1

Wish list

• raising interest in learning and education
• changing the culture of the museum
• defining new possible practice
• highlighting value of non-school learning – especially to government
• achieving the 2008/2010 e-strategy targets
• encouraging pupil’s creativity
• augmenting how groups and individuals solve problems
• realistic implementation of personalisation
• common understanding of tools and technology between lecturer and students
• to find real ways of understanding how well learners are doing
• to engage young people to help democratise our museum
• inspiring a passion for learning in young people
• delivering better and more effective services
• developing traditional teaching
• to make science learning fun through inventive strategies and tools
• encouraging confidence in children and adults
• allow teachers/students to explore practices beyond current paradigm
• helping students broaden their experiences and horizons of the world
• to help communication between teachers.

Barriers

• lack of kit in school
• integration of learners’ own technology into school
• training in how to use new technologies
• CPD linking technology with subjects
• control culture
• fear of ICT
• fear of change
• unlearning – moving away from – old practices
• unwillingness to acknowledge when young people lead
• time constraints
• teachers’ identities
• assessment measures
• institutional cultures
• curriculum constraints
• privacy of learners’ ideas and content
• internet safety
• intellectual property.

Reducing barriers

• allowing teachers to play with their strengths
• encouraging and harnessing student voice
• playful approaches that tie to policy issues
• collaborative and shared approaches to developing ideas
• to imagine alternative ways of being a teacher
• time to discuss what people are using/want to use
• time to learn the tools
• access to equivalent tools.

Black-box ideas

• coordinate work of stakeholders so it is easier for teachers to find the support they want
• teacher-centric system for sounding out what should be next practice
• effectively showing examples of innovation
• trust box to encourage risk-taking
• open technology to encourage sharing early ideas between teams
• technology to allow children to choose their learning experiences.

Tim Rudd
Senior Researcher, Futurelab
All change for innovation

Tim hosted an open mike session that allowed delegates to freely express their views on the role of innovation in education and their concerns to the many perceived barriers faced by educators attempting to implement change. What follows is a number of quotes from delegates.

• Isn’t there enough innovation out of school? Isn’t it the case of just letting it in?
• Isn’t innovation more than technology or other devices? It’s about the activities.
• Innovation will be chaotic… it will happen… but how do we (educators) organise it and make use of it?
• How do we change classrooms if some agents of change never visit them?
• It’s about cultural change… that’s what’s needed.
• It’s people who innovate not organisations. These individuals may they act as agents of change in organisations.
• How do we build risk in a culture of assessment and performance management?
• Provide time and space.
• Teachers need good examples of innovation to inspire them into action.
• TDA is building subject associations to roll things out… who is working with them?
• Problem with using best practice is that it is de-contextualised.
• There has to be a level of trust with teachers… but we also need to work at policy level to re-professionalise teachers.
• Problems of trust are because we don’t know what each other are doing.
• Need to focus on all stakeholders who work with learners, not just teachers.
• Why don’t you… just do it?
• In Chicago you can apply for a charter to follow your own school curriculum… this new model has brought together new professional communities amongst charter schools. These schools are on the edge of innovation.
• There is an assumption that young people want to use technology in the education setting.
• An assumption we are teaching digital natives.
• Ask end users for feedback on practice.
• Teachers should encourage learners to bring their technology into school.
• Not what teachers should do but what we can do to help teachers.

Professor Natalie Jeremijenko
Director, Environmental Health Clinic, New York University
How do we structure legitimate participation in the emerging environmental movement?

Natalie highlighted the work of her research team at the Environment Health Clinic. The aim of the clinic is to translate global issues into local issues and therefore local problems. What follows is a synopsis of some of Nathalie’s work:

Avatar tadpoles – tadpoles are very sensitive to water pollution, in particular to endocrine disruptors. Within a virtual world of tadpoles – named after government officials in charge of water supply – citizens are encouraged to monitor their tadpoles as their health is directly affected by water data from their local supplier.

Robotic mice – mice share our environment, but being smaller they quickly feel the affects of toxins we may be allowing into our homes. Robotic mice monitor and reflect the health of the environment we live in – providing us with early warning signs.

No park areas – the use of plants to grow in areas with high levels of toxins. In New York streets have ‘no park’ areas so that much of the detritus that is thrown into our streets and gathers at the edges of our streets is dealt with by nature. Plants are able to reduce the affects of toxins by releasing oxygen into the atmosphere – they also make the streets a more attractive space.

Feral robotic dogs – many schools in the US are built on brown waste land near toxic waste dumps – rationale being that the land is cheap. Unfortunately, this building strategy is not helpful when considering the health of our young people. Feral robotic dogs use their noses to follow toxic trails. School children learn to take an interest in their environment and also develop specialist language as they try to describe and explain their observations of these feral dogs.

Ooz – ever heard a pigeon speak? Well in New York this may just happen to you. In an attempt to raise people’s awareness that they share their environment with other creatures, sensors have been placed around key spaces where, for example, birds gather. These sensors then trigger a recording of a voice – the voice being that of the bird. The same idea has been used with other animals such as foxes.

Supported by:

top of page