The National Creativity Showcase
The Creative Workforce Program was a major sponsor of the national Creativity Showcase, held at QUT in Brisbane from 6-7 December 2007. The Showcase was a key initiative within Erica McWilliam’s Associate Carrick Fellowship focusing on developing pedagogical models for building creative workforce capacities in undergraduate students. Thirty-eight undergraduate teachers from 21 universities and a range of disciplines attended the Showcase. Deputy Vice Chancellors (Academic) from these universities nominated the participants. A DVD of Showcase highlights has been produced, with numerous copies distributed to participants and industry leaders. An online repository of outcomes is also being developed.
Learning Lab Coalition
The Learning Lab Coalition (LLC) brings together secondary schools/colleges and other stakeholders in 21st century schooling who share a commitment to teaching for creativity and using learning technologies to optimise the learning outcomes of their students. It aims to assist member schools to forge stronger links with their communities.
The Creative Workforce Program launched its website at www.learninglabcoalition.net in 2007. The key elements of the site are as follows:
• New technologies – provides timely and updated interactive content on current and over-the-horizon learning technologies and other innovative learning products and tools; showcases the innovative use and outcomes of learning technologies in formal and informal learning environments.
• Knowledge Bank – consisting of reports and articles on creativity in the classroom and learning technologies; State, national and international data that focus on creativity in the classroom and learning technologies; and films and podcasts of creative practices that are taking place in formal and informal learning environments.
• Sharing your ideas – professionals and leaders in the education sector are encouraged to share their ideas and experiences on issues related to learning and the development of creative literacies of most interest to them, using the variety of virtual community tools available on the site (e.g., forums, comments, polls, blog, podcasts and vodcasts).
In the latter half of 2007, the Creative Workforce Program initiated a project to survey over 500 State, Catholic and Independent secondary schools and colleges across Australia. The objectives of the survey are:
• to identify the learning technologies topics and resources that teaching professionals and leaders are most interested in, with findings to drive site content;
• to identify which Coalition benefits/resources the target teaching professionals and leaders are most interested in; and
• to develop insights into how organisational size, location and level of disadvantage/advantage impact on the use of learning technologies/applications and the skill levels of the organisational staff and leaders.
This project is also a membership drive, with 50 school principals already signed up.
Student Media Centre Project
This project is being carried out in collaboration with Anglican Church Grammar School (ACGS) and a digital media design company Niche Studios. This design-based research project, led by Jen Tan, was developed to address the need for innovation in formal educational contexts, with a view to facilitating the adoption and diffusion of new media technologies amongst students and teachers in post-compulsory schooling. It also involved implementing an online creative ecology for youths to publish their original locally-created content and develop the postmillennial literacies and competencies necessary for their cultural and economic futures.
The Student Media Centre project started in 2006 with funding and in-kind contributions from various organisations, including QUT’s Institute for Creative Industries and Innovation (iCi) and the Australasian CRC for Interactive Design (ACID). It was completed in December 2007. Two researchers from the Creative Workforce program facilitated the iterative on-site development and implementation of a Web 2.0 open-source virtual learning environment (intranet) by a core team of 60 senior school students for their whole school community. Key outcomes of the project include
• better understanding of the enablers and barriers to sustainable innovation diffusion and the development of creative capacities among young adults in formal education settings;
• a model for implementing similar online creative learning ecologies in other post-compulsory school settings; and
• a doctoral study (Jen Tan) to be completed in 2008.
Upon completion of the project, the ACGS requested that it continue, and has renewed its commitment to its share of the funding. Negotiations are underway to replicate the design-based experiment with potential collaborators in the local and international post-compulsory schooling sector, including a number of private schools, the Queensland Academy for Creative Industries, and a philanthropic foundation in China committed to the development of creativity in youths.
Preparing the Creative Workforce monograph
Erica McWilliam secured a contract from UNSW press to write a monograph, ‘Today’s Kids, Tomorrow’s Creatives: Preparing the Creative Workforce’. The monograph will:
• clarify what creative capacities are and the role they play in new economy;
• elaborate a pedagogical framework with specific relevance to creative capacity-building through post-compulsory education;
• provide specific examples of creative capacity-building in action in post-compulsory schooling, higher education and in workplace education and training; and
• consider what all this means for educational policy directing post-compulsory schooling, and higher and further education.