The MEIBL Workshop starts today. Looking forward to an exciting week.
Jason Hiner of Tech Republic has been on a bit of an innovation focus of late. I follow Hiner because he looks at technologies impact in a much broader perspective than most people and he has a very pragmatic attitude toward where he believes technology can take society. I was intrigued by his post regarding Da Vinci and the Theil’s “Twenty Under Twenty” fellowship which provides $100,000 over a two-year period to young people with big ideas to drop out of college and pursue to their dreams. Hiner like many others in IT and the Academy initially scoffed at Theil’s fellowships but upon further reflection and consideration he admits to seeing some merit in encouraging young people to pursue their dreams. The link to Da Vinci brings in the notion that one of history’s greatest innovators did so through observation, trial and error. Da Vinci did not receive a traditional classical education and many people speculate that if had been trained in this way he may not have come up with the ideas that he had.
Like Hiner I am not willing to “throw education under the bus” so quickly and go onto suggest that, if done well, education should actually help to stimulate the creativity and innovation in the Da Vincis of the future. Doing education well means that we move away from focusing on the recipe and regurgitation and standardized testing that is so fundamental to the American system and focus on creating environments in which our learners learn how to learn through “real world” projects that require the creation and application of innovative solutions. I think it is criminal that if we want real innovation we need move outside of our educational system to allow students to follow their passions and dreams in programs like Thiels.
We need to be doing this within our educational system and I hope to be in a position very soon to start working on the process to start putting innovation into our educational system. This means that our educational system will need to radically change–when you consider the fact that there are so many people calling for this type of change perhaps the timing is right…
Syracuse Sends Personalized Video Messages to Admitted Students to Stop ‘Summer Melt’ – Wired Campus – The Chronicle of Higher Education via kwout
If you have an MSNBC anchor and founder of a major social networking site as alumni than this idea does look promising. The personalized message part isn’t as “personalized” as I was expecting and to be fair to Syracuse the videos are well shot and produced and most people won’t notice the insertion of the student name at the beginning. I would be interested in seeing if the method works.
[youtube]Pk7yqlTMvp8[/youtube]
In his blog Intentional Leadership Michael Hyatt compares project management to herding cats and points to the following similarities:
- Cats are solitary animals.
- Cats are seemingly aloof.
- Cats are easily distracted.
These same similarities or attributes also easily be shared with the academy. I can easily say this about faculty because I am one and I know that I and many of my colleagues are solitary not because we don’t like people or we don’t like collaboration but because our work often forces us to focus intensely in a very narrow area. Getting faculty to collaborate is important and the best way to do so is to insure that the collaborative effort is worth everyone’s time.
The laser focus most faculty have on their work can also make them seem aloof. Once again, I must insist that it is not that faculty are aloof or uncaring. They are some of the busiest people you will ever encounter so just need the right circumstances to engage. But this is the case for all people–we are only willing to engage in a project or endeavor if it has meaning and relevance. A leader must ensure that the work that they are asking of faculty has significance and respects their time and efforts.
Hyatt’s final point about distraction is common to all people. With all our amazing mobile conveniences comes the potential for endless distractions. Staying on task and keeping a sense of urgency is something that must be modeled. A sense of urgency is caught is not taught, so it is crucial for a leader to walk the walk.
Academics, in New Move, Begin to Work With Wikipedia – Wired Campus – The Chronicle of Higher Education via kwout
We all knew that this day would eventually come…
