Charles Leadbeater presents several cases of “amateur innovation.”

Amateur innovation refers to people who, equipped with the tools to collaborate and innovate, make their expertise known through great ideas from outside traditional walls.

Charles Leadbeater’s theories on innovation have compelled some of the world’s largest organizations to rethink their strategies.

Design by reusing:

“The best way to have a new idea is often to recuperate a discarded old one.”

His book, “We-Think,” explores how this emerging culture of mass creativity and participation could reshape companies and governments.

We-Think

“We Think” was published by Profile in March 2008. It includes a sharing draft of the first eleven chapters online. This was downloaded thousands of times, and the author received hundreds of comments from people that changed the way the book was written.

Readers:

“Today people are known for what they SHARE… Wah!… Pretty provocative!”

“We Think” explains how digital technologies are enabling new forms of collaborative creativity and innovation.

The first three chapters of the book can be downloaded from the “We Think” section of his website.

He is currently researching for “Atlas of Ideas,” a program that is mapping changes in the global geography of science and innovation.

Get Inspired

Proteach Italia is the collaborative research project that was launched on November 1st by the Open University’s KMi and the University of Padova. The project aims to explore the use of new video conferencing innovations to enhance the learning experience of professional groups.

Specifically, the project will evaluate the use of FlashMeeting and Compendium in the teaching of Italian language teaching professionals as they learn techniques for teaching English to students. The teaching professionals will be undertaking a course delivered by the University of Padova using a team of coordinators. The course will be delivered in a Moodle environment with the use of FlashMeeting for oral teaching techniques.

“This is a most exciting collaboration for us as it will produce tangible results in our VLE,” said Paula de Waal, the e-learning manager of the facoltà di scienze della formazione at the University of Padova. Paula, along with KMi’s Elia Tomadaki, is leading the project.

The research team is interested in seeing the impact of video training as opposed to face-to-face sessions and evaluating the analysis of meeting types by analysing the broadcast and text chat use within the tutorial groups. The research aims to consider the application of live online video interactions to support the professional learning of language teachers across boundaries. The use of argument mapping with Compendium as a stand-alone or incorporated tool will provide research into the building of visual representations of knowledge in multi-language learning environments.

The KMi team of Elia Tomadaki, Ale Okada, Alan Fletcher, and Anna De Liddo were very happy to launch the project with a visit to KMi by John Hannon, who tutors for the University of Padova. The planned set of exchanges is aimed at finalising the project roadmap and providing some Italian translation for use in the FlashMeeting training sessions. The project will run initially until April 2008.

Related Links:

• FlashMeeting
• Compendium
• University of Padova
• OpenLearn