IMAGINATION, CREATIVITY AND INNOVATION

Michael Evans of the Australian Mathematical Sciences Institute speaks to ‘Today’s Schools’ about ICE-EM, a series of textbooks for school years 5 – 10 that matches the Australian Curriculum for Mathematics. The International Centre of Excellence for Education in Mathematics (ICE-EM) is managed by the Australian Mathematical Sciences Institute, a consortium of 27 university mathematics departments, CSIRO Mathematical and Information Sciences, the Australian Bureau of Statistics and the Australian Mathematics Trust.  ICE-EM was set up to strengthen education in the mathematical sciences at all levels - from school to advanced research and contemporary applications in industry and commerce. ICE-EM is funded by the Australian Government through the Department of Education, Science and Training. The original ICE-EM Mathematics series has been rewritten and developed for the Australian  Curriculum for Mathematics, while retaining the structure and approach of the ...

‘A ship is always safe at the shore – but that’s not what it is built for.’     Albert Einstein Why is it that organizations fail to innovate?   Why can a company with a good track record and a sound core business miss out on opportunities it is presented with? Executive management has become all about metrics, about maintaining and growing existing market share and about predicting future growth – right down to the last cent.   This is a company like a ship moored at the harbor where it is safe from the uncertain nature of the open sea.   The open sea is too risky.   We don’t know what’s out there or if the weather will turn. But this same executive management urges its employees to come up with out-of-the-box remarkable new ideas for generating extraordinary growth.   This has to be done without upsetting the normal operations of the company and its predictable, budgeted-for growth. This is a mixed message t...

Catch a man a fish and you feed him for a day.   Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime. Chinese proverb Catch a man a fish and you can sell it to him.   Teach a man to fish and you ruin a wonderful business opportunity. Karl Marx Catch a man a fish and he eats for a day.   Teach a man to fish and he has no time left to do his day-job. Mark O’Neil Three contrasting views of the world.   Let’s look at what these might be taken to mean in the context of a teacher, and teaching. There is a lot being written out there in cyberspace right now about how the digital revolution in the classroom spells the end of the textbook.   In Australia, for example, there are state and federal government initiatives to collect vast amounts of discrete digital content so that teachers can search for content and build their lessons for a new curriculum from the ground up.   The principle is that teaching a man to fish fe...

Learning is not something that is ‘done’ to a student by a teacher. Learning only happens when a student chooses to engage with what is being taught. But, obviously learning can also happen without a teacher. Regardless of how old we are, whether we ‘succeeded’ in school or not, learning is what humans do. As long as we live, learning is a choice. Traditional schooling was (is?) about a teacher imparting knowledge perceived to be useful to a group of students. This happened in an enclosed space, for a fixed time and with no outside influence or interference for the duration of the ‘lesson’. Exams, assignments and essays were, and often still are, done alone. In the industrial society where these students left school and entered factories, this was good preparation for their lives as adult workers – performing repetitive tasks, probably alone, in an enclosed space and under supervision and with little or no outside interference. So does traditional schooling as described st...

In a previous post Managing Change I wrote about two ways that change can be affected – forced change (F-Change) and nurtured change (N-Change).   The role of management for each of these is vastly different.   For anyone seeking to instigate change the polar opposite approaches might be: F-change N-change Demand insist on perfection Listen to staff opinion and objections and follow up Lead from the front, because no-one else has the required vision Deliver resources, feedback and follow-up in time Direct decide who is capable and who does what by when Arrive to key meetings and show willing to engage with staff Assert assert your authority to make change See for yourself Dictate the way things are done Encourage learning, ideas...

A quick search on Google Images can throw light on how technology has changed our lives. (@abdulchohan, Festival of Education 2012).  Try this for yourself – search for Google Images for 19 th century surgery and 21 st century surgery.  In typical images of 19 th century surgery you will see men in suits operating on a patient lying on what looks like the kitchen table.  In the 21 st century image you will see surgeons in a clean environment surrounded by technology.  Try the same for printing, or banking to see the impact technology has had on our lives. But when the same search is done for education, there is a difference.  Pictures of 19 th century schoolrooms – of children sat at desks in rows facing the teacher – are not so dissimilar to some 21 st century pictures.  There are exceptions, but it is clear that technology has not yet made an impact on all classrooms.    In recent years the rise...