Subject: Innovation

Posted by Richard Turnock on 11/30/2010
In Reply To:Innovation Posted by Pedro D. Almaguer Prado on 11/30/2010

Message:

Querido Pedro,

Yes, the five disciplines you listed and described are important for a learning community. Peter Senge’s vision of a learning organization has been popular and well received in many organizations.

There is another privately run program with government labels that supports implementation of improvements that has a strong track record in business, health care and education: The Baldrige Performance Excellence Program.

I participated in a third well developed quality improvement program targeted at Oregon schools. Two of us taught classes for teachers. The educators implementing the program then documented improved results in their classrooms. But there was no way to sustain the program and school administrators were not willing to participate beyond the small school districts and a few isolated groups of educators within larger districts.

The slide rule was used for over 300 years as the way engineers and scientists calculated. Then the hand held calculator came out and by 1974 slide rule manufacturers were all out of business. The evolution of computers and the way we use the Internet now has again transformed how engineers and scientists calculate. Now we are doing more problem exploration, converting back and forth between the real world and the virtual world, and trying to verify and validate our results.

We need a new metaphor for the education system. Sir Ken Robinson (see www.ted.com) suggests we use an agriculture metaphor instead of the current industrial age model for schools.


Richard

Follow Ups:

Innovation - Pedro D. Almaguer Prado 11/30/2010 
Innovation - Chad Green 12/1/2010
Innovation - Pedro D. Almaguer Prado 12/1/2010
Innovation - Richard Turnock 11/30/2010
Innovation - Niall Palfreyman 12/1/2010
Innovation - Pedro D. Almaguer Prado 12/1/2010
Innovation - Alex Leus 11/30/2010