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Recently, I had the honour and privilege of attending "An Evening with Sir Ken Robinson", which was organised by Learning without Frontiers and supported by Promethean. A mid-week event on a school night would usually be a tall order for many teachers to attend, yet the large auditorium was full to capacity and, as Sir Ken started speaking, I immediately knew that this would be an evening of inspiration and forward thinking, which indeed it was!

Please, read and comment. Are you 'teaching creatively' or 'teaching for creativity'?

Sir Ken Robinson speaks wisely about the problems of standardized testing.

I like Sir Ken Robinson, his TED Talks combine humour, insightful commentary and a perspective on education that I agree with. But after watching his latest speech (see video) I was left wondering, who is he preaching to and why is there a need for it?

How can educators solve the problems of education? What action should we take?

If dolls can be using social media, you'd think schools and teachers could, too??

"a free public service to teach children to read with phonics" pointed out by Ken Bain (2012)

Animated visual representation of Sir Ken Robinson's talk to the RSA [n.d.]

We also need to recognise that, largely, those teachers who use technology the most effectively and lead the way with its use are also, by and large, excellent teachers with or without the technology. This helps us see what many of us appreciate already: the one biggest element of improving education, making learning more creatively inclined and entrepreneurial, is the teacher. It's not curriculum, class sizes (though smaller class sizes make the teacher's life easier) or even assessment. This is something I've been reporting back from research for two years (and which I've been blown out on more times than I can count). It's not about letting students lead the way with technology and "show us teachers" how it's done. Students are generally quite narrow in their knowledge of how to harness technology or creative venture. No, it's how teachers and parents teach that is important. It is, to use a piece of edu-jargon, pedagogy, both at school and at home.

Passion! Ken Robinson's site and promo new book: The Element-How finding your passion changes everything. I often feel that the guidance during school would best be about how to access who we are, how we each tick and what we can best offer the world. How can we best serve? And education as the embodiment (model) of "how can we best serve you?" (each human individually to be the best (me) we can be).

"The National Parks: America's Best Idea is a six-episode series directed by Ken Burns and written and co-produced by Dayton Duncan. Filmed over the course of more than six years at some of nature's most spectacular locales - from Acadia to Yosemite, Yellowstone to the Grand Canyon, the Everglades of Florida to the Gates of the Arctic in Alaska - The National Parks: America's Best Idea is nonetheless a story of people: people from every conceivable background - rich and poor; famous and unknown; soldiers and scientists; natives and newcomers; idealists, artists and entrepreneurs; people who were willing to devote themselves to saving some precious portion of the land they loved, and in doing so reminded their fellow citizens of the full meaning of democracy."

This series is scheduled to be run again during January 2010. Check your local PBS stations.

Ideas from Joel Klein and Sir Ken Robinson

We are driven by curiosity. It is an innately human quality that has driven us to explore, ask questions, investigate, wonder why and search for a deeper understanding. In a very fundamental way curiosity is the driver of all self-directed learning. It is our desire to find out more, unlock new knowledge and answer our questions (big ones and little ones) that compels us to learn. Sir Ken Robinson famously and provocatively asked "Do Schools Kill Creativity?". The same question might be asked about curiosity.