Eight Big Ideas!

Change is happening wherever we look at a frightening pace, and all of the organisations we currently know and understand are being completely reinvented as I write. We need to work within the opportunities this presents to build a new schools and learning system for this new world.
A learning system to equip our little learners with the skills they need to be successful bigger learners and to be successful in a world that is changing beyond recognition. A learning system where every little learner is a reader, writer and counter by seven or eight, a powerful little learner by the time they leave primary school and on a pathway to success by the time they leave secondary school. We need to continue to build brilliant learning places where we nurture talent, creativity and imagination wherever we can find it, and we need to share and network the things that work and stop doing those that don’t! Dr. Seymour Papert talks about 'Eight Big Ideas'. The eight ideas are:
• learning by doing.
• technology as building material.
• hard fun.
• learning to learn.
• taking time – the proper time for the job.
• you can’t get it right without getting it wrong.
• do unto ourselves what we do unto our students.
• we are entering a digital world where knowing about digital technology is as important as reading and writing.

We must continue to use these ideas to build brilliant and never settle for satisfactory when what we do can be outstanding. OK, satisfactory is easy, predictable and anyone can do it... well almost anyone! At the start of yet another year we must all agree that we will never settle for things that are just good enough when with a bit of energy and effort we can be outstanding. We must all set new goals and to strive, work and struggle, each and every day, to create the extraordinary, the outstanding and the brilliant!

Chris