Boulders and pebbles
I’ve just returned from the “Harnessing Technology” 24hr meet. This is where the various implementation Boards for the next phase of the Harnessing Technology strategy had been brought together to discuss synergies. I’m on the Children’s, Schools and Families Board representing Naace. The whole experience was very thought provoking of course, but of note was yesterday afternoon’s keynote speaker Charles Leadbeater, a challenging ‘futurist’ who works with media and education. For example, in July he delivered his report, What Next? to the Innovations Unit on the future of learning.
First he treated us to his Boulder and Pebbles analogy to decribe the changes taking place globally. His premis being that traditional media businesses were boulders of different sizes on a beach. As institutions and organisations they looked inward and relied on traditional practices and views of how their industry worked. The beach however was slowly filling with pebbles, small start-up innovative companies exploiting the web, and in particular Web 2.0 ie. the inter-connections between the pebbles. As time passed some boulders were being covered in pebbles and for Leadbeater, the challenge is how these boulders can look like or even transform into pebbles before being overcome.
His analogy can of course be used in the context of any organisation and he did this by using the ideas contained in his What Next launch presentation in which he states that “It’s all about relationships and learning“, that is “Learning with and not to and from” and proceeded to set forward 10 (from his list of 21 ideas) to challenge leadership and policy in education:
- Personal budgets for families at risk
- Emotional resilience for all in Y7
- Break up big schools: max school size
- National peer learner programme
- Scrap the summer holidays
- Capabilities curriculum for Y7-9
- The Personal Challenge
- The Community Based Teacher
- Individual budgets and programmes for potential Neets
- Schools as productive enterprises
- School of Everything for Schools
The full report is worth reading.
Image credit: Julia Webb
Tags: harnessingtechnology, leadbeater, charles leadbeater, future learning
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December 3rd, 2008 at 7:44 pm
Thanks for the write-up Gareth; I’ve downloaded the report and will peruse. Generally been impressed by Leadbeater, especially on personalisation, and I see much sense in some of the ten ideas - particularly the one about school size.
Not so sure about doing away with the summer hols, though - they provide the time and space for the informal learning, both for pupils and teachers - the time for children to be children, and for many teachers these are our 20% time (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google#Innovation_time_off) - OK, not quite the perks of working for Google, but these weeks in which we can engage in our own projects, whether work related or not, are what really enriches the curriculum we offer.
December 4th, 2008 at 11:34 am
On the school holiday, Leadbeater cites that long school holidays hurt disadvantaged kids more than middle income children. He quotes from a US study which found that while middle income children’s reading improved over the school holiday while learners in low income families lost nearly two months of reading skills. This builds to a large attainment gap over time. I suppose the ideal would be to give low income learners what middle income learners gain in that period. Holiday clubs have been one solution in the past, but with technology we should be enabling flexibility provided the incentives are there and understood. Leadbeater also points out that the system causes market forces which make holidays in school time cheaper which again hits attainment and widens the gap. The key is flexibility of access to learning I feel.