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Merlin John

It was like the special effects in the TV series ‘Heroes’. A student looks to camera with flames shooting from the palms of his hands. But this is no super-hero and he’s safe because the water in the methane soap suds is protecting his hands.

This video shows science that’s as dramatic and engaging as it gets. But it’s just one tool in the teaching portfolio of Peter Carney who teaches at Bowring Community Sports College, Liverpool. Bowring is at the heart of Knowsley’s Building Schools for the Future programme, so Peter and his colleagues are rewriting their curriculum to bring in more investigatory, cross-curriculum learning. Like his Spy Academy Project, which pulls students into a whodunnit to develop creative learning across subjects with teachers working in teams. It’s innovation in action.

Dan Roberts, at Saltash.net Community School in Cornwall, has used the school’s farm facilities – yes, they have livestock hosted at a partner primary school’s ‘farm’ – for his Recharge the Battery project. This science and cross-curricular exploration, which has ‘rescued’ battery chickens for a free-range life, has been picked up by the Specialist Schools Trust and the Association for Science Education as exemplary teaching and learning.

You can check out the Saltash.net chickens and pigs on their online ‘eggcam’ and ‘pigcam’ (see links top right). The innovation is engaging learners in Cornwall and further afield.

Professor Claudia de Almeida Pires trains teachers, and she enlists students to help. It appears that Brazilians do their education as they do football – with imagination and verve. It’s not surprising because Claudia’s boss told her that what was required were “Peles of learning”. Claudia sets younger teachers to learn about ICT with their students, and she gets these teachers to work with older teachers to engage them with ICT as well.

Her colleagues linked Brazilian learners (some of them not attending school) and teachers with contemporaries in Portugal and France for a cross-curricular, multi-lingual project based on the dream of flying – the story of Brazilian aviation pioneer Alberto Santos-Dumont. This innovative approach involved five stewardesses (teachers) and 115 passengers (learners) from four schools in three countries across two continents. The ‘luggage’ was Claudio Fragata’s inspirational book about Santos-Dumas ‘Seis Tropiezos y un Salito’ (six tumbles and a one small leap).

Some of the Brazilian learners were street children who found the route back into school via the internet cafes where they engaged in the project and taught other students about the internet. In fact, peer learning was a key feature of all these projects which were conducted by members of the Innovative Teachers Network run by software giant Microsoft.

Innovation. It’s what teachers are increasingly expected to exhibit, often by organisations that have no track record for innovation. But where can teachers find out about it, find examples for themselves and get in touch with other teachers for their own peer learning?

Strangely enough, apart from a few noble exceptions like The Innovation Unit, you won’t find much on the websites of the Government and its agencies. But commercial companies are getting more involved. Microsoft has invested some $500 million over 10 years for its Partners in Learning programme of which the Innovative Teachers Network is a part. There are other companies too – Apple has its Apple Learning Interchange, Adobe its Adobe Education Leaders, Toshiba UK its Toshiba Ambassadors (links top right). Even interactive whiteboard suppliers SMART Technologies and Promethean have vibrant and resource-rich communities online.

However, Microsoft has made a strong bid for the innovation and transformation agenda (with support for BSF too), and the fourth Annual Microsoft Worldwide Innovative Teachers Forum, held this autumn in Hong Kong, demonstrated how a powerful network for innovation in teaching and learning can be built up over a relatively short time with careful investment and cultivation. The scale is impressive. Some 69 projects were evaluated online by 30 judges in the early stages of the Worldwide Innovative Teachers Awards. They were the product of regional events in each of the 64 countries represented.

They were whittled down to 28 ‘semi-final’ projects which were then re-evaluated and voted on to create first, second and third awards in four categories. When you consider that only two of the aforementioned projects were given awards, and not first position, you get an idea of the quality of the teaching and learning.

There was the amazing Nathan Kerr (first place, Innovation in Collaboration), a geography teacher from Onehunga School in Auckland, New Zealand, who had the confidence to allow his students to lead him with ICT. The engagement soared and suddenly he was able to share curriculum work on his students’ mobile phones, their preferred exchange medium. He took care of the pedagogy and they helped him with the rest.

His message to other teachers is to trust their students and let them take charge of their learning. In retrospect he wishes he had trusted his even more.

And there was the irrepressible Australian science teacher Andrew Douch (first place, Innovation in Community), whose Anywhere Anytime Biology Class podcasts demolished his classroom walls at Wanganui Park Secondary College and brought in new teachers, including a Nobel prizewinner and thank-you letters from remote learners he had never physically met.

India’s Parambir Singh Kathait took first place in the Innovation in Content category with his Let’s Explore the Universe, while Mariella Paz’ Business Game took first place in the Educators Choice. However, every teacher attending the event was already a winner – and the quality of learning had nothing to do with geography or level of resources. It’s just as well that a voting system was in place because consensus might have been difficult.

“What’s great about these Innovative Teachers events is that we’re all inspired by the truly amazing things that teachers from all over the world are able to do with technology,” says Kristen Weatherby, Microsoft’s Academic Programme Manager in the UK. “I wish that every teacher could attend an event like this and have the opportunity to learn from and connect with other teachers – as well as being celebrated for the tireless work they do every day.”

It’s an important point. Hong Kong is a fascinating city in its own right, a dynamic example of international entrepreneurship and drive. And the networking that took place from the moment of arrival, plus the organised sharing of experience through the exhibition of projects and local collaborative projects on the ground, were very effective stimuli.

All the teachers I spoke to intended creating further school projects online with their new acquaintances. And many teachers had already met through local events on their own continents and online. Many were already familiar with the work of the people they met.

There was a time when you would meet executives at Microsoft whose views of education were along the lines of, “We’ll do something cool in PowerPoint and then share it.” No longer. Learning has changed. And ‘selling’ no longer works without the ‘learning’: technology alone is not enough.

The days of promoting and protecting a raft of products or a platform also appear to be numbered. While these innovative teachers might be fluent in Microsoft products and services, they were also collectively well versed in the full gamut of technologies from Google to open source, mobile phones and PDAs.

It might be an unfortunate phrase but ‘thought leadership’ is becoming an appropriate position for commercial organisations. Because if companies are unable to pick up valuable market information from the excellent teaching and learning that was on display in Hong Kong then education is beyond them. And the real thought leaders are the learners and teachers bringing about the innovation.

What was most encouraging was the consistency with which key elements of learning – skills-based learning, team teaching, peer education, cross-curricular investigations – are appearing worldwide. It’s as if a new confidence is beginning to emerge in teaching and learning, a confidence that rather than pose a threat to ‘standards’ innovative practice is what will simultaneously engage students and enrich their learning experiences.

David Walddon, Programme Manager for Innovative Teachers, is under no illusions of the importance of the event to the company. “The Microsoft Worldwide Innovative Teachers Forum is at the core a place for teachers to come together to build global communities of practice, to collaborate in person and to take that collaboration to the next level in an online environment, to access quality content – teacher and industry-built - and to celebrate the accomplishments of these most innovative teachers from all over the world. But it is also a place for Microsoft to learn what is happening in classrooms around the world to begin to understand the new ways teachers are integrating technology into teaching and learning.

“Over and over again the teachers tell us their experience at the forum and the collaboration that takes place afterwards both formally, on the Innovative Teachers Network, and informally, via e-mail and other communications, has changed their lives and the way they approach their teaching and learning. Over and over again they tell us that, until they came to the forums (local, regional and international) they thought they were alone. Now they know they have kindred spirits, pioneers like themselves, in their own countries, in their regions and all over the world. They become stronger teachers and stronger advocates for their students with this understanding.”

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