Three challenges to educators:

Three challenges facing educators wishing to fully engage their students with aspects of the information society thus enabling knowledge networking, and thereby encouraging digital innovation are:

1. The ability to look at the development of digital lives, personally, professionally and for the students I encounter in my work, beyond the techno-hype of the digerati (Lindsey, 2014). Too much concern about cyber safety by educational administrators often hampers educators’ ability to model and teach use and development of C21st skills (Assessment and Teaching of 21st Century Skills (ATC21S), 2014). The high level of concern about issues of authenticity and authority is extreme when consideration is given to the fact that humanity has been living in various kinds of information ages since writing began (Floridi, 2009, p. 153). Subsequently people have learned to access, select, utilise and adapt the work of those such as Gutenberg and Turing, to apply it to their own information needs and to create new information (Floridi, 2009, p. 154)
2. The focus should be on celebrating that information is socially situated, is socially constructed, and, therefore, needs to be designed and utilised to empower people, as opposed to overwhelming them(Lindsey, 2014). The exponential growth of information in recent times has challenged the degree of subsurface root development to support the rapidly developing branches of humanities’ technological tree (Floridi, 2009, p. 154).
3. Educators have a unique and critical role to play in assisting their students to develop skills that enable them to cope with Moore’s prediction that information will double every eighteen months (Brown & Duguid, 2000, p. 14).  While excitement is aroused in infoenthusiasts by this amazing amount of knowledge, students needs a means of redefining the masses of information comes to them as documents, stories, diagrams and images which convey knowledge and meaning (Brown & Duguid, 2000, p. 16). Users do not consider it to be made up of “quadrillions of packets of data (Gates, cited in Brown & Duguid, 2000, p. 11), they need mechanisms to sort, rework, recreate, use, and move to the solutions that such access brings, rather than focussing of the questions and issues (Brown & Duguid, 2000, p. 19). Our students need to be educated to participate in this sudden burst of global information societal action for the depth of understanding, networking and collaborative problem solving to which it is so well suited (Floridi, 2009, p. 154).

References

Assessment and Teaching of 21st Century Skills (ATC21S). (2014). Retrieved March 4, 2015, from Microsoft Education: http://www.microsoft.com/education/en-au/leadership/Pages/assessment.aspx

Bawden, D., & Robinson, L. (2009). The Dark Side of Information Overload, Anxiety and Other Paraxes and Pathologies. Journal of Information Science, 35(2), 180-191.

Brown, J., & Duguid, P. (2000). Limits to Information. In J. Brown, & P. Duguid, Social Life of Information (pp. 11-33). Boston: Harvard Business School Press.

Floridi, L. (2009). The Information Society and Its Philosophy: An Introduction to the Special issue on “The Philosophy of Information, Its Nature, and Future developments. The Information Society: An International Journal, 25, 153-158. doi:10.1080/01972240902848583

Lindsey, J. (2014). 1.1 Information environments. Retrieved March 4, 2015, from INF532 Knowledge Networking for Educators: https://interact2.csu.edu.au/bbcswebdav/pid-289790-dt-content-rid-490057_1/courses/S-INF532_201530_W_D/S-INF532_201530_W_D_ImportedContent_20150211062159/module1/1_2_Discover_philosophy_info_digital_environ.html

Along with four other teachers from my school, I was lucky enough to attend the Ewan McIntosh Masterclass run by Pearson and held in Melbourne last May. We were selected primarily because our middle years (Years 6 – 8) students were about to move into a brand new building which our school is naming the Positive Education Centre. We didn’t really have an opportunity for a briefing before we came and no -one really knew what to expect or what we were intended to bring back to school. Ewan conducted the PL as a design activity, showing us some examples of what is being done in a variety of settings, and the type of outcomes that are being achieved. He then worked us through a range of activities: story telling to consider different mind sets; needfinding issues with education;  ideating using hexagons, sticky noting concepts et cetera. To complete these tasks we were divided into groups and worked with people we had not met before, some of whom were not based in schools. The processes were interesting and thought provoking and the themes that arose were common across all groups. When we got to the hexagon stage of telling the story of how we could innovate and what blocks were preventing innovation in our workplaces a few things became really clear. Individual teachers in most schools have very little chance of being able to innovate unless their concept is adopted by those in the high level positions of authority. I was in  a group with someone in such a position, who said they would never undertake this type of activity with their whole staff, only with selected personnel.

This, to me is the nub of the problem with design thinking application. By excluding people from such a process you don’t know what you might be missing. The wider the variety of brainstormers, the less likely you are to miss an important factor in the product or service you are trying to create. Brown and IDEO both refer to the power of the brainstorming process (Brown, 2009, IDEO, 2012) and The Works at Walker (The Works At Walker n.d) benefits from engaging in such a practice. In the latter case students past and present, parents, employers, local community, teachers and architects developed a holistic vision for the building and the learning that will take place within it, both face to face and virtually. Too often, finished buildings fall short of educational needs and practical inclusions: a bench designed to hold computers has two power points where four are necessary; laptop storage spaces built into student lockers cannot accommodate charging facilities; an orchestra pit designed for musical performances has no lighting capacity to illuminate the music on stands during a production. Virtual spaces contain content but do not link to belief systems or consider learning needs.

The world is full of unknowns and the best way to avoid missing things that may be known to some people in any process is to involve more people. How might we questions enable breadth of thinking, and broadening the knowledge base should be seen as positive. Resolving any design requirement is more likely to please more people and there should be fewer “how did they miss that?” moments.

What did we five get from our experience with Ewan’s professional learning session? For us as a group, it might have been of more immediate value if part of the day had been spent together so we could prepare some work on a specific issue relevant to us. We did  learn some great ideas for using with our students, a sense of what could be if we were allowed to try the process “for real” and an experience which we are still processing months later.

Brown, T. (2009). Change by Design How Design Thinking Transforms Organizations and Inspires Innovation. New York: Harper Collins.

IDEO. (2012). Design Thinking For Educators 2nd Edition. Retrieved August 9, 2014, from Ideo: http://www.ideo.com/by-ideo/design-thinking-for-educators

The Works At Walker. (n.d.). Dear Architect: A Vision Of Our Future School. Retrieved July 25, 2014, from http://www.ournewschool.org/assets/pdf/Dear_Architect.pdf

Why does design matter?

Design affects all aspects of an organisation in ways that are both seen and clearly understood, and also unseen, unclear and pervasive. It can be the latter that has the greatest impact on the people who work in an organisation, those who visit it, or those who might walk past on the street.

What are the core reasons for which we need a design process?

A design process is needed to ensure that the end result really does fulfil a need, ideally to the best extent possible. Design thinking charges us with being given the white pages of history on which to create beauty for the future (Starck, 2007). It entails needfinding, brainstorming and prototyping preferably in multidisciplinary teams (Seidel & Fixson, 2013, pp. 19-21) . Without interdisciplinary teams the hope of enriching a human experience is seriously challenged (Buchanan, 1992, p. 6).

What might be the role of design when we think about learning spaces?

The aim of utilising a design thinking process for learning space development is to build the learning capacity of students and enhance the teaching practitioner’s role. Design thinking is strategic because it unleashes the disruptive, game changing potential that is latent in everything (Brown, 2009, p. 7).

References

Brown, T. (2009).   Change by Design How Design Thinking Transforms Organizations and Inspires   Innovation. New York: Harper Collins.

Buchanan, R.   (1992). Wicked Problems in Design Thinking. Design Issues Vol 8 No 2,   5-21.

Seidel, V., &   Fixson, S. (2013). Adopting Design Thinking In Novice Multidisciplinary   Teams: The Application ans Limits of Design Methods and Reflexive Practices. Journal   Of Product Innovation Management, 30, 19-33.

Starck, P. (2007,   March). Design and Destiny. Philippe Starck Thinks Deep On Design.   Retrieved July 5, 2014, from http://www.ted.com/talks/philippe_starck_thinks_deep_on_design