Leading Creatively in the New Designscape

Posted on March 17, 2010 by Stanley Frielick

FIrst up on day 2 is Don Ryun Chang, President (2007-2009), Icograda IDA on “Leading Creatively in the New Designscape”.  Don is currently professor at Hongik University where he teaches branding and design management and was the former Dean of the Graduate School of Advertising.

Design is the enabler for innovation, collaboration, events, sustainability – picking up on the theme from keynote 1 yesterday that design has come of age. It’s not an option.  Examples from international events to show the critical contribution of design – eg. the WDC World Design Cities Summit, and how Korea uses design in the new ‘designscape’ of the city.  Who are the emerging design stakeholders – government, corporations, etc. How to embed design as a 24/7 activity.  Change as a multilevel element – eg. Gehry bringing new elements to architecture.

Presents an overview of design history in Korea from 1984 – 2010 – an amazing explosion of design-led innovation with huge economic growth.  Evolution of the ‘design tree’ with the evolution of media – key role played by Adobe in developing the tools for this.  The coming of the ‘transmedia’ age. Convergence of all media creates challenges, opportunities and excitement – along with incredible complexity.

Way forward for design – design leadership, design technology, design network – collaborative opportunities, architects with graphic designers, etc. – transdisciplinary movements.  Emerging design markets for new types of design students. Refs Banny Bannerjee at Stanford – complexity management=design thinking.  New marketing keywords – innovation, relationship, brand, creativity – are converging in new design management.  Guess at AUT we have the beginnings of this transdisciplinarity in the Faculty of Design and Creative Technologies eg. CoLab.

What are the aspirations of students in the ’emotional age’ ? – the metacurriculum at Hongik Uni dealing with ‘the beyond’ – a revolutionary design programme for the designscape of Korea. Redefining design education for the complexities of the new decade – producing ‘design Aces’ skilled across product design, space design, and communication design.

Implications for education – role of the teacher increasingly shifting to being a designer of learning environments, and the need to make these engaging, compelling and spectacularly irrational (Ritzer).  So every teacher needs a baseline competence in principles of new transdisciplinary design and basic digital literacy for using the tools.  The ‘last mile’ problem again ….

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Leading Change in the New Millennium: The last mile

Posted on March 16, 2010 by Stanley Frielick

Next up is Professor Ian W. Gibson, Ph.D.Vincent Fairfax Family Foundation Chair in Education Learning, Leading, and Teaching Futures. Department of Education, Faculty of Human Sciences. Macquarie University, Sydney – “Leading Change in the New Millennium: The last mile”.  The last mile is the fibre link to the home from your ISP – bringing real broadband to the masses – a huge challenge for providers, governments, etc that is often put in the too-hard basket.  The argument is that in education we have a last mile that we are not dealing with.

Quoting Dewey on defending ‘pet notions’ and then Einstein – “insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results each time”.  Now Senge on systemic change – the 5 disciplines are crucial. So looking at change in teacher education and school systems. Off to a good start !

Google’s experimental fibre network on You Tube – similar to MUSH initiatives. Are all of us actually doing things differently – or only some of us. It’s time for a different kind of university – he references principles of teacher education at Macquarie.  So the last mile is the gap that exists between our knowledge of the ICT skill level required for teachers to engage in 21st C learning and the actual current practices in teacher ed.  Likewise for academic development in higher ed.

Going on now to Greg Whitby on 21st C learning – changing the pedagogical DNA.  Integration of pedagogy and technology is the end game – but large numbers of schools and teachers are not engaging, are not dissuaded of the notion that ICT in education is an optional choice, using ICT as an expensive overhead projector – despite the huge investment in ICT and network infrastructure.   Shows the ‘vision of K-12 students today‘ clip.  Is there anyone who hasn’t seen this ? – 562,000 views – but Wesch is up to 3,5 million!!  Long quote on the last mile:

“The last mile looks at what there is after the politically correct statements have been issued, the PR and marketing people have done their work, the policies and practices have been accepted and there are good resources freely available to all on a publicised website for readily available laptops, supported by professional learning opportunities, available to all, and amazing systemic enablement.”

And Toffler to finish off: “the illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.”

and a plug for the upcoming 2010 International Symposium on the Futures of Teacher Education and School Leader Education at Macquarie in July.

Running out of power now – guess I have a last mile problem in this hotel ballroom with no ready access to electricity for my laptop ! Still the MacBook Pro lasted about 7hrs today so I’m impressed.

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