Page 123 - Microsoft Word - The Future of Learning April 2017.docx

Innovation requires individual thinking as well as reflecting as a team. The number of factors that contribute to Innovation is vast. Some of the key elements include:
• Curiosity
• Competence - self-talk, persistence, questioning, research capability
• Clearly identifying the actual need or opportunity
• Motivation
• Brainstorming - knowledge, ideas, concepts and concept frameworks
• Daydreaming
• Intuition
• Ideation
• Failing Fast
Within these drivers of innovation are a set of personal qualities and thinking strategies that enable, as well as drive, innovation and ingenuity. We need to be aware of, and continually increase, the learner’s capabilities to explicitly enable them to be innovative and ingenious. Innovation and ingenuity are responses to the needs and opportunities that are ever changing.
The greater the rate of change in our community, the more opportunity there is for innovation and ingenuity. Most of these dispositions for innovation and ingenuity are found in the competencies, and the Learning Process provides the mechanism for developing innovative and ingenious ideas, concepts and concept frameworks.
The set of human qualities that bring definition to creativity and lead to the development of new products, systems, environments and media are numerous. These qualities include personal vision and self-confidence, an effective range of thinking approaches and strategies, persistence, the ability to lead and collaborate, strategize and synthesise. Along with these capabilities, we need to be able to distil the results of the synthesis process to create products, systems, environments or media that meet distinct social and economic needs or opportunities.
For learners to be authentically engaged in the Learning Process, the context for the learning needs to be authentic. Learners are far more engaged in learning tasks when they have agency over their learning and have some decision-making capability over the context of that learning. High levels of agency are not always possible, but as the learners develop their competence and their understanding of the Learning Process, they can work through the curriculum far more efficiently. Educators may then allow the learners an afternoon a week (initially) to work on a learning task of their choice that they are passionate about. Learners could work on this task on their own or in groups of learners with the same interest.
To leverage their passions, the task that is chosen is usually focussed around a challenge or a big question. The challenge can be anything the learner is passionate to learn more about and wants to find answers to. The learner(s) needs to be very specific about the learning intention that they set for themselves, as their peers will be assessing how well they have met that learning intention.
Learners can work through the Learning Process and then apply their new understanding to be innovative and ingenious. The learners are then encouraged to run classes for those that are interested in what they have learned. By taking on the role of being an educator, the learner deepens their understanding and it also allows their peers to learn from other learners’ learning experiences. When the learners are passionate about what they are learning about and the ideas and concepts they have developed, they inevitably want to share that learning with everyone. Learners need to get used to learning from anyone, including their peers and learners that may be younger than them.
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