Good meetings with people involved in Innovation a group spun out a couple of years ago from government.
One thread involved focussing on what is changing in the world ie globalisation, demography and new technologies.
Education is becoming more and more important and therefore there will be a relentless increase in demand for education.
Traditional systems will only be able to satisfy a much smaller proportion of that demand than in the past.
There will be a rapid acceleration of the trend from the consumption of knowledge to the production and sharing of content.
While this is characterised as being a movement from the age of the encyclopedia to that of wikipedia I don’t think we have got our head around the fact that very soon most of the world will be doing their education in an unregulated, unfunded, on-line system.
It does make me wonder what will become of formal qualifications if people will acquire their knowledge online.
It sounds like you’re getting a lot out of your trip.
Just a quick look at some of the people behind ‘Innovation’
but this stood out-
“She quickly realised that she was far more interested in how people learn than teaching subject related content” – Rosie Rafferty
Sounds to me like the usual suspects making a quick buck by wrapping themselves around ‘change’ .
So then Rosie becomes “Schools Policy Advisor to the Soil Association, currently reviewing their national Food for Life programme”
Great a PR- Education -Innovation Cirus which will lead nowhere but cost a fortune
“She quickly realised that she was far more interested in how people learn than teaching subject related content” – Rosie Rafferty. – This happened in a paper that I took at uni, the lecturer was researching blogging as a teaching tool and ALL the assessment was centered around giving this person feedback on the learning tools and the blogging. Students complained and still continue to complain about this lecturer who isn’t teaching the subject up to standard and not preparing them for further study. Part of it was forcing students to teach themselves (part of the research) -not much instruction in class, despite requests and I wondered why I had paid all that money when I could have done that myself for free. – It’s still going on, we were just used and abused in my book.
I’m not saying the kind of innovation that Trevor is talking about isn’t good, I’m just saying that there are those who abuse it.
Rugby soon….lucky sod. The only thing that lets Twickenham down is that you have to watch England when you go there. Personally my favourite rugby stadium in the world.
I’ll say.
Many years ago (1981/1982) I was watching a British documentary about work and education. On it a manager of some major electronics company mentioned a job that he had advertised which had 300+ respondents most of which had all sorts formal qualifications. He ended up hiring the guy who left school when he was 15 with no qualifications because he walked in with a computer he’d designed and built. He mentioned that the reason why none of the people why high qualifications got the job was because not a single one of them could do it.
I’ve been wondering for some time if formal qualifications actually have any meaning. If people want to learn then they will and that makes the free dissemination of information and the ability of like minded people to come together to discuss what they’re learning about far more important.
You put it so well Draco. That is the point I was trying to make in my clumsy manner. And it may be that us in the more traditional western countries are the last to realise this.
I’ve wasted thousands of dollars
My concern is that if qualifications no longer matter it will become even more of a it’s who you know workforce.
Man all these posts this morning are depressing, how about a UK caption competition? Got any good snaps Trev?
BTW – who won the ones with Chippie on the Bike and Trev playing music?
Haven’t been taking any Spud – even at the Artesian bar.
In my day the formal qualifications was a bit a of a merry go round. Even for 4th year university exams, you would often get the questions before or big hint s that this would be in the exam. Of course you swotted that bit really hard, hence you knew it backwards. Yet now for Microsoft exams online, if you get one type of question wrong you get more questions on that area, and once you have achieved a pass that it, no more questions. And they use multichoice in a meaningful way . ie check the two right answers or check the wrong answer