Back to the Future or Mission Impossible?

As teachers, we have a duty to be creative and innovative in the classroom. Of course every lesson is not characterised by invention. We are busy people, doing our best not to drown in a sea of top-down prescription, proscription and conscription. Often our ideas are derived from other sources such as schemes of works, textbooks or from our tried-and-tested materials gathered over the years. There is nothing wrong with that if it is coupled with an occasional foray, when we can, into avenues of fresh ideas, approaches and invention.

If teachers are able to innovate from time to time and then share with others what they have done, then effective ideas can spread. It is this sort of grass-roots innovation that moves the teaching profession on.

Today’s digital kids think of information and communications technology (ICT) as something akin to oxygen: they expect it, its what they breathe, and it’s how they live. They use ICT to meet, play, date, and learn. Its is an integral part of their social life; it’s how they acknowledge each other and form their personal identities.

John Seely-Brown, 2004

Here is the blog and gallery of the photographer Dave Severn.

My ICT group was fortunate enough to have Dave give a ‘virtual’ masterclass to advise and encourage them in their own photography.

If you were asked to list your creative heroes, you would probably include outstanding individuals whose creative endeavours have added value to society.

My list would include:

• Christian Barnard
• Michael Morpurgo
• Taylor Mali
• Tim Berners-Lee
• Sarah Jane Szikora
• Wayne Rooney ??

One could argue that schools largely failed to acknowledge and use the most significant media of the 20th century – film and television. Now, at the start of the 21st century, many of them seem to be trying to head back to the 19th. This divide or gap between school and the world outside school may in fact be growing – or at least the task of building bridges may be getting harder.

Professor David Buckingham

Great view from my room at the Holiday Inn in Stirling.

Originally uploaded by Communicate.06 Delegate.