Innovation networks in Education
David Hargreaves argues that schools will be transformed only when teachers embrace the ‘hacker ethic’ - a passion for developing new practice and a readiness to share the results freely with colleagues through innovation networks.
(… “but who is my ‘colleague’”, asked the rich young ruler?)
There are a few gems in this one. David argues that like the Internet, networks of educators sharing innovative ideas needs no central authority; “the role of government would be to help it flourish as a system that knows how to transfer innovation”.
The irony is that I had to log in to the Teaching and Learning Exchange (TaLE) - with my Department of Education username/password (which required a help-desk call to obtain) to find the link to David’s freely available article… I wonder how many educators don’t make it that far? This is quite related to something David challenges as a necessary transformation for education: The fifth transformation - making an open source culture:
A […] practitioner who creates the knowledge behind a powerfull innovation faces four options over what to do with it. They are:
- keep it to yourself;
- sell it for profit;
- share it with a partner; or
- give it away for free to anybody who wants it
After dealing with the alternatives, David concludes that “the path to system transformation requires every school to be willing to give away its innovations for free, in the hope of some return, but with no guarantee of it.”
It’s great that our Department of education is taking steps to foster innovation among it’s workers, it will be even greater when they open their innovation networks to give and receive from the wider education community… at the very least, this opening-up will make it easier for DET workers to access/contribute to these innovation networks without having to make a help-desk call to obtain a password to login!
The Personalised Learning project looks like an exciting project and I’m looking forward to seeing where it leads!
