Tag: Ewan McIntosh

Bookmarked The Middle Leader Manifesto: What 160 Leaders Say Matters | notosh by Ewan McIntosh (notosh)

Leading from the Middle is essential for any organisation, particularly in the complex world of education. This is a manifesto that describes the key promises we need to keep.

Ewan McIntosh identifies what it takes to grow a middle leader. This includes making your ideas small, referencing data, support the collective, encourage serendipity, get stuff done, revisiting the scrapheap and communicating in many ways. In some ways, this reminds me of a piece I wrote about being made an ICT Co-ordinator a few years ago.
Bookmarked Don’t let a crisis define the brief (medium.com)

Running headlong into massive changes in your life, your organisation or in your business, on the back of this urgent, dodgy brief isn’t wise. Imagine the crisis has written a brief, with unreasonably urgent deadlines, questionable rationale and no understanding of whether we have the skills to pull off the changes it’s asking us for. You wouldn’t respond unquestioning to a brief this poor, let alone commit to “systemic changes” that will last a life-time on the back of it.

So rewrite the brief.

Ewan McIntosh says we should not be restricted by the brief we are given and instead rewrite it. This starts with researching ideas and developing a project nest. From there, look for assumptions at play and work to identify the real problem at play. For McIntosh, this is how to be proactive about defining the new normal.
Bookmarked [ #cefpi #tep10 ] Clicks & Bricks: When digital, learning and physical space meet – Ewan McIntosh | Design Thinking, Education & Learning (edu.blogs.com)

School buildings as influencers of future practice, not responsive to existing practice.

Ewan McIntosh breaks down learning into seven different spaces:

  • Secret Spaces
  • Group Spaces
  • Publishing Spaces
  • Performing Spaces
  • Participation Spaces
  • Watching Spaces

It is interesting to consider that this was written nearly ten years ago.

Liked Why do we go to university? A new insight from Howard Gardner by Ewan McIntosh (Medium)

When students choose what universities to go to, two key trends can be seen in Howard Gardner’s latest research, revealed at the International Conference on Thinking. Some go for transactional purposes — to get a good degree and pack their CV full of things so that they can head into ‘real life’ in the best possible way. Others go for transformational reasons — they see university as a chance to evolve from being a high schooler into something new, to reinvent themselves.

Replied to Working out a school’s competitive position even when it’s not competing (edu.blogs.com)

Beyond two core value propositions, your team will be lost and not know what they are chasing:

  • newness
  • performance
  • customisation
  • “getting the job done”
  • design
  • brand/status
  • price
  • cost reduction
  • risk reduction
  • accessibility
  • convenience/usability
I love this post and it has really make me reconsider how I think about the choice of schools. Question though, are there some things that schools consider as ‘options’ which should be a given in today’s day and age? For example, is it essential (is anything essential) that students have access to technology to support their learning? Or is it ok that technology is something that the school down the road is into, not us.