The new era of education and the future of work relies heavily on our ability to think in new ways (Creativity), do things in new ways (Innovation) and generate new value and opportunity (Entrepreneurship)
Scientists and journalists share similar skills and challenges in digital storytelling, especially when it comes to researching an unfamiliar field. Current tools for searching information from the academic world in particular can be difficult and time-consuming. PubMed and Google Scholar, for example, present searches linearly—a long list of things to sift through. And if you have no idea what terminology to use, this list can be quite daunting. Another method is to look up references listed at the end of a research study, though these citations are not always public.
If you want to know what's in store for the future and how to prepare for it, Joi Ito has some book recommendations for you.
"Deep Work" by Cal Newport "Change Agent" by Daniel Suarez "The Industries of the Future" by Alec Ross "The Seventh Sense" by Joshua Cooper Ramo "Wonderland" by Steven Johnson
Kristen Eshleman, director of digital innovation at Davidson College (NC), said her campus dipped its toes in the MOOC experience by joining edX along with Wellesley College in 2013. Hamilton and Colgate joined them soon after. "Because we are resource-constrained, it made sense to team up and collaborate on resources and ideas," she explained. "There are challenges for us since we don't have Schools of Education or graduate students. We recognized that our voices don't carry same weight in edX as larger institutions. We were seeking strength in numbers to express what we wanted to get out of the platform."
Rochester Institute of Technology today announced the launch of a new facility to house MAGIC Spell Studios, a collaborative program that combines entrepreneurship, academics, content creation, production and distribution for digital media such as games, apps, film and art.
Scheduled to open in fall 2018, the 43,000-square-foot building will feature "a state-of-the-art sound stage, tiered theater with a projection booth and a cinema-quality audiovisual system, sound mixing and color correction rooms, numerous labs and production facilities that will help support RIT's recent designation as a digital gaming hub, and an innovation zone that mixes faculty, staff, students, technology and infrastructure across programs from the School of Film and Animation, the School of Interactive Games and Media, and the RIT Center for Media, Arts, Games, Interaction and Creativity," according to the university.
Curtin University is pulling out all stops to encourage innovation and entrepreneurship. As one of Australia’s largest tertiary institutions, it aims to set the tone for undertaking research that will benefit Western Australia’s community and economy, channelling its funds and efforts towards students and staff, government and industry.
With more than 44,000 students across a broad range of undergraduate and postgraduate courses in business, health sciences, humanities, Aboriginal studies, science and engineering, the university has a strong international presence with campuses in Perth, Sydney, Singapore and Malaysia.
Much of its efforts and investment are centred on areas where the state has strong research strengths and industry know-how: minerals and energy, ICT and emerging technologies, health and sustainable development.
This essay proposes five models of innovation in higher education that expand our "Ideas of the University," envisioning educational start-ups in the spirit of entrepreneurial experimentation. The author seeks to realize each of these feasible utopias as a way to disrupt higher education.
Business strategies – especially in the tradition sense – are rather pushy. If you have a product, your strategy is to explain why a customer should use it.
Design thinking as a strategy flips this. Instead of forcing a product on customers, instead, it sees things from the customer’s perspective. A design mindset is not problem-focused, it is solution focused and action-oriented towards creating a preferred future. Design Thinking draws upon logic, imagination, intuition, and systemic reasoning – exploring the possibilities of what could be. This train of thought creates desired outcomes benefiting the end user.
When design principles are applied to strategy and innovation the success rate for innovation dramatically improves.
Creativity in the workplace is also important. Ideally we highly value it there to support individuals, teams and organizations to be more innovative, resilient and high performing. In the workplace creative people are often the go-to people to help forge new directions in product development, productivity, efficiency and innovation. The late Steve Jobs, co-founder and CEO of Apple Inc. and CEO of Pixar, described a creative person’s role as making new connections, offering something slightly different and putting together disparate elements into a fresh new perspective.
In an effort to take the next step in teaching, learning and research, the University of Michigan (U-M) today launched an initiative to encourage faculty and staff to embrace digital technology in the classroom.
The Academic Innovation Initiative will be led by the Office of Academic Innovation (formerly the Office of Digital Education and Innovation), along with a steering committee, over the next year to “identify investments and solutions that will enhance excellence and impact at the university, and shape the future of education,” according to a statement from U-M.
Provost Martha Pollack said the vision for the initiative is to increase opportunities for younger people to get a feel for what higher education is like and become college-ready.
But there’s a realm beyond all of this. As jobs become automated, what remains of “work” will move up Maslow’s hierarchy.
The success of the elite worker will depend upon that person’s ability not to get things done, but to have breakthroughs — to use access to knowledge and automation to deliver explosive ideas. To do that which only a human can do.
Think Zero to One — the idea that incrementalism holds us back from paradigm-shifting innovation—but for your own career.
Kim Flintoff's insight:
This is what Richard Florida flagged with the Rise of the Creative Class...
A whole world to discover! http://www.curtin.edu.au/ This impressive widescreen presentation gives great insights into the way in which Curtin University creates a culture of entrepreneurship through research and innovation.
In an environment of endeavour that also includes names such as BHP Billiton and Jimmy Choo, Curtin is taking the challenges of today to help build a tomorrow that is better for us all.
THEY learn to read at age 2, play Bach at 4, breeze through calculus at 6, and speak foreign languages fluently by 8. Their classmates shudder with envy; their parents rejoice at winning the lottery. But to paraphrase T. S. Eliot, their careers tend to end not with a bang, but with a whimper.
Consider the nation’s most prestigious award for scientifically gifted high school students, the Westinghouse Science Talent Search, called the Super Bowl of science by one American president. From its inception in 1942 until 1994, the search recognized more than 2000 precocious teenagers as finalists. But just 1 percent ended up making the National Academy of Sciences, and just eight have won Nobel Prizes. For every Lisa Randall who revolutionizes theoretical physics, there are many dozens who fall far short of their potential.
Child prodigies rarely become adult geniuses who change the world. We assume that they must lack the social and emotional skills to function in society. When you look at the evidence, though, this explanation doesn’t suffice: Less than a quarter of gifted children suffer from social and emotional problems. A vast majority are well adjusted — as winning at a cocktail party as in the spelling bee.
What holds them back is that they don’t learn to be original. They strive to earn the approval of their parents and the admiration of their teachers. But as they perform in Carnegie Hall and become chess champions, something unexpected happens: Practice makes perfect, but it doesn’t make new.
In The Power of Positive Deviance, the authors present a counterintuitive new approach to problem-solving.
Their advice?
Leverage positive deviants--the few individuals in a group who find unique ways to look at, and overcome, seemingly insoluble difficulties. By seeing solutions where others don't, positive deviants spread and sustain needed change.
Kim Flintoff's insight:
"Act your way into a new way of thinking instead of thinking
This past October, I had the pleasure of presenting in Irvine, California at the new home for the Digital Media and Learning Conference on digital learning at museums. With my colleagues Eve Gaus of The Field Museum and Rik Panganiban of the California Academy of Sciences, we tried to identify the leading trends we’ve seen emerging in recent years, given our different vantage points as advocates for digital learning in our respective museums.
Playfully titled “The DigitalLearningification of Informal Learning Centers: Lessons from Three Museums,” we tried to make the case that museums are unique and influential informal learning institutions that can be powerful spaces for young people to learn, connect and create digital media. Museums often have more freedom and resources than a school, library or after-school program to support a variety of digital learning offerings for youth, such as tinkering spaces, youth-led media creation, and exhibit creation. At the same time, museums are moving beyond siloed programs for young people, toward connected learning experiences that better integrate with school-time learning, other institutions that youth are involved in, and their time with their peers.
The major trends we explored:
a maturing space youth as co-designers distance learning augmented and virtual reality
Two words, 10 syllables: ‘transdisciplinary innovation’. It’s the new buzz-phrase going around the University of Technology Sydney. So much so that the institution has created a whole new faculty dedicated to it.
And what is transdisciplinary innovation? It’s when people from different professional backgrounds work together to solve a problem. Professor Louise McWhinnie, dean of the newly minted Faculty of Transdisciplinary Innovation, said it was established in response to industry demand.
Necessity is the mother of invention, right? Well, not always. Steven Johnson shows us how some of the most transformative ideas and technologies, like the computer, didn't emerge out of necessity at all but instead from the strange delight of play. Share this captivating, illustrated exploration of the history of invention. Turns out, you'll find the future wherever people are having the most fun.
Hess argues that in the current disputes over education reform, virtually all vocal parties-- from teachers' unions and ed schools on the left, to the charter school or testing enthusiasts on the right-- accept without questioning the features and structures of schools that were established in the late 19th century. Under this approach, the long-standing assumption is that all schools need to be standardized in their curricula, that all students enroll in uniform schools, and that all schools be organized on the one-teacher-per-age-defined classroom. Provocatively, Hess states that these Left-Right disputes are standing in the way of actual progress and that everything from pedagogical techniques, curricular variability, and the structure of the teaching profession needs to be rethought given 21st century economic realities.
If our Committee for Economic Development of Australia (CEDA) report is right that 40 per cent of jobs existing today will be gone within 10 years, children now in primary school need an education that prepares them for a very different future.
One response is a greater emphasis on STEM (science, technology, engineering and maths) learning in schools. This is commendable and necessary, but not enough on its own.
It's time for Australia to take a "systems" approach to innovation, rather than a purely linear one, if we are to use our budding scientists, engineers and mathematicians to best effect.
Futures.edu is part of Spark Festival Sydney, a celebration of Australian start-ups, supported by Jobs for NSW and the City of Sydney, which runs until October 30.
Risk-averse and tech-backwards bureaucrats are hampering the push for agile and innovative Australian government, according to high-tech start-up firms.
Emerging technology firms say government contracts remain sown up by multinational "dinosaurs" like IBM, SAP and Accenture, despite high-profile stuff-ups, because they are masters of federal government's painfully bureaucratic tender process.
At the start of this post, I cited the work of Charles Darwin. It’s clear enough by now that the key adaptive trait in human beings is our ability to discover and share new knowledge—to innovate. That’s why we’re here and Neanderthals aren’t. Innovation is what helps us flourish. To slow down on innovation now by missing the chance to boost research is to turn our back on our greatest strength. It’s replacing thinking with hoping. That’s not worthy of people who have big dreams for their children. We need to invest in research as if billions of lives depended on it—because they do.
Calls for innovation in education seem to get louder by the day. “Innovation” has become the catchall term for the urge to make up for what our current system lacks; a system that, on balance, is neither delivering an equally high-quality education to all students, nor designed to reliably prepare young people for the modern workforce.
From there, of course, opinions about what sorts of innovations we ought to invest in, and to what end, vary politically and philosophically. At the Christensen Institute, we’ve always divvied up these wide-ranging ideas into two main categories, which Clay Christensen first identified in the 1980s: sustaining and disruptive innovations. Those categories are helpful in identifying the dimensions along which organizations are improving and how new business models can displace existing ones. But disruptive innovation theory has little to tell us about whether a particular innovation will be successful.
Education has yet to Catch up to the Wisdom Dewey Offered Long ago
“Education is not preparation for life; it is life itself”
“Were all instructors to realize that the quality of mental process, not the production of correct answers, is the measure of educative growth, something hardly less than a revolution in teaching would be worked.”
“The child and the curriculum are simply two limits which define a single process. Just as two points define a straight line, so the present standpoint of the child and the facts and truths of studies define instruction.”
“If we teach today’s students as we taught yesterday’s, we rob them of tomorrow.”
“The path of least resistance and least trouble is a mental rut already made. It requires troublesome work to undertake the alteration of old beliefs. ”
Kim Flintoff's insight:
The future of learning was articulated many years ago... here's one big contributor to the vision...
You can’t walk around any college campus, school district or company without hearing the word “innovation.” Organizations of all sorts display front and center the innovative ideas and innovative ways they build and sell products to change teaching and learning, from Netflix-like adaptive algorithms to augmented reality experiences.
Is there a limit or consensus to what innovation actually means? Does one have to be among the first in a field or community to push the idea or product, or does reinventing (and improving) the wheel count too?
These questions grounded discussions at last weekend’s annual Education Writers Association higher education seminar. The event for colleges and newsrooms covering education focused on innovation and was aptly held at Arizona State University’s Tempe campus, an institution transforming itself into a “New American University” — a redesigned modern university envisioned by ASU President Michael Crow and researcher William Dabars.
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