Alan November captured discussions with Dan Pink were he expands on his thinking as it relates to schools, their design and the education system. Alan's discussions are part of the November Learning Podcast series and are available by subscribing through iTunes.
Opening Minds - UK exploration of the 21st Century Curriculum
1 comments Posted by Dave Thomson at 22:44
Curriculum change is something that education has been dealing with for hundreds of years and the history of education is littered with theories, ideas, claims and even legislation.
Talking to educators during a recent visit to the USA and discussing the failure of the UK education system to remain meaningful to a growing number of learners would suggest that change is in the air across the western world. What was regarded as the skills and aptitudes needed for the industrial age and more recently the information age seem to be under detailed scrutiny in a number of countries.
In the UK the debate has been accelerating in pace for some time, with efforts to develop a more personalised approach to learning and the consequences that result from tailoring the curriculum to more individual need.
The RSA (Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures & Commerce) Opening Minds initiative set out to encourage the introduction of systemic change within the UK national curriculum and proposed a new competence-based curriculum. It seeks to re balance the information based national curriculum and draw in those competencies that are necessary for the 21st Century. The competencies are:
- Competences for Learning
- Competences for Citizenship
- Competences for Relating to People
- Competences for Managing Situations
- Competences for Managing Information
The initiative is being taken up by a growing number of schools in the UK - keeping one eye on the pressure on them to maintain their examination status in league tables but recognising the need for changes which meet the needs of the learners in their care.
In July 2007 the national awarding body QCA made the announced of changes to the formal secondary curriculum to reduce the prescription that existed previously to allow teachers and schools the freedom to innovate. Opening Minds, changes to the statutory curriculum and other programmes for curriculum innovation are clear indicators that we are in a continually changing curriculum landscape - exciting times.
This e-book explores Learning Spaces from the perspective of effective learning and how learner expectations may influence their development.
It also covers the roll of learning technologies in bringing together different groups of people and specialisms all of whom can impact on the learner and the learning that takes place. While the e-book looks at learning spaces other than Primary and high schools a lot of the basic ideas apply and the discussion surrounding the desire to create more flexible spaces, both the physical and virtual ones, is of real value.
There is useful debate about formal and informal physical spaces and the importance of striking the correct balance to create the 'correct' environments for learning. The book opens up the debate about the role of technology as part of the mix and suggests that while learners are have more access to technology and they are comfortable using it many are still not proficient. This presents real issues for those schools and other educational organisations that see e-learning as a key component of personalisation.
The many VLE type products out there may provide alternative routes but the assumption that students can use them straight off and value the experience is open to question. The book also explores the issues surrounding the notion of community and identifies some of the ways in which a well designed virtual learning space can contribute to the development of an effective learning environment. The full e-book (173kb) can be accessed on the main site which also contains a number of case studies and the book broken down by chapters.
Tony Buzan is probably one of the best known proponents of Mind mapping as a means to aid thinking by using a diagram to represent words and ideas.
The development of computers allowed the Mind mapping idea to become extremely flexible and Tony Buzan developed his own software to allow maps to be created and stored.
Now the web host a number of mapping tools that not only allow you to create and even illustrate mind maps but to share them with a wider community of users . Most of the online mind mapping tools are free to use but additional features can be accessed at an additional cost.
Probably one of the best around is MindMeister which is simple to use and has a large number of maps created by other users to browse. Another is Mindomo, which also has a library of maps to access but is a little more powerful. Yet another is Bubble.us with similar features but has a relatively limited tool set.
If thinking is a human trait, and we often think through things with other people, then using this sort of online tool provides new opportunities.
Until 2006 the UK never had an entry into the International ThinkQuest Competition. Thinkquest is a competition but one that is almost unique in the world. Students are asked to create web sites covering topics that interest them.
They work in teams, sometimes from across the world and collaborate to create these sites drawing on any expertise they can locate. The sites are totally student created with an adult to act as mentor or guide.
I promoted ThinkQuest to an online community within an e-learning project known as the Virtual Workspace not knowing how students would react. Two teams appeared out of the ether with students drawing in potential team members from within the 18 thousand or so learners within the community. Lee's team had a number of challenges to overcome in the six month journey for the project. They completed the work and ended up publishing a site on Nanotechnology which is now in the competition library. The team that put the project together were from totally different schools. They never met until they went on a trip to London paid for by Oracle, sponsors of the ThinkQuest competition.
On the coach journey back they began planning their 2007 entry which won the 14 to 19 category in the UK version of the ThinkQuest competition having chosen the topic - Water.
The potential of online communities and that of project based learning really came home to me as a result of this work but don't listen to me listen to Lee on the ThinkQuest Podcast.
I attended a workshop run by Bob Pearlman at the BLC07 Conference in Boston during July and what he had to say still resonates with me weeks later as I write this entry.
Bob posed two questions for the session:
What kind of learning and teaching is appropriate for students of the 21st Century?
What kind of learning environments and facilities will support and enhance the education of today’s and tomorrow’s students?Bob is clear on the key requirements of a 21st Century curriclum and describes the characteristics of such a curriculum in numerous publications - the most useful for me was the one entitled 'Educational Leadership' on the ASCD (Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development) website. ASCD is a community from across the world exploring all aspects of the education process. Bob's article can be found here.
Much of what he says is familiar to educators in the UK as we attempt to define personalised learning but in Bob's case he has practical experience of schools where this has been done. His presentation from the BLC07 conference can be found here.
Bob emailed me on 13th August 07 to discuss some aspects of design and provided an additional useful input to the discussion which is an interview he did and which is posted on the DesignShare web site. It provides a very useful context for discussions with designers and others on thinking through what school design needs to achieve.
Joinedupdesignforschools
This book, produced as the result of a series of projects run with young people in 60 schools, is a really fascinating journey through a design process.
Youngsters working with designers and as designers were able to influence the designs of everything from the appearance of learning spaces to the design of school uniforms.
The experience (thats what the book feels like) of accompanying their journey makes great reading and is great for anyone who wants to rethink the spaces we teach our kids in.
The Sorrel Foundation Site
http://www.thesorrellfoundation.com/v&a.html
The Innovations Unit - useful additional information
http://www.innovation-unit.co.uk/projects/third-party-projects/joinedupdesignforschools.html
The V&A Web Report
http://www.vam.ac.uk/school_stdnts/schools_teach/programmes/previous_events/joinedup/index.html
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