To become an innovator, you need to study well, son!
"It's cool to be an innovator"Polina Nikolskaya, "Newspaper.
Ru»A new manual on innovations is being introduced into Russian schools as part of the experiment.
Schoolchildren are invited to read interviews with Andrei Fursenko, Mikhail Prokhorov and Anatoly Chubais, as well as stories about paper clips, Lego and a refrigerator. Teachers were offered to use the book in all subjects "from mathematics to history" and in extracurricular time.
A new textbook for high school students has been presented to the general public in Moscow. The book "Living Innovation: Thinking of the XIX century", written by the scientific columnist of the newspaper "Izvestia" Sergey Leskov, has already appeared in some schools – as part of an experiment. According to the author himself, in his book he wanted to show that "it is profitable, profitable and just cool to be an innovator."
As reported to the "Newspaper.En" in the press service of the publishing house "Enlightenment", which produces the manual, a total of 6 thousand copies of the book were published, which were sent to schools in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Kazan, Rostov-on-Don, Yekaterinburg and Novosibirsk. Alexander Kondakov, Director of Enlightenment, told journalists, teachers and officials about the book at a conference dedicated to innovations in education and in the federal state educational standards being developed (FGOS). From the windows of the assembly hall of the Moscow Linguistic School No. 1531, where the conference was held, a mobile classroom "Nanotechnologies and Materials", specially fitted for the event, was visible – a truck with a large trailer, in which the laboratory was located. The truck class, the draft of a new textbook and "many other things," as Kondakov said, are the ideas of the Ministry of Education and its head Andrei Fursenko as part of the implementation of the School of Innovation project. The director of the publishing house also added that the manual is one of the stages of testing second–generation FGOS in schools. The standards imply the formation of a new personality – a competent and responsible citizen – and a new national educational idea.
In "Enlightenment" they say that the first seminar for teachers on the topic of the new manual was held at the beginning of the year in Kazan. The teachers were met by methodologists from the "Enlightenment", Moscow school No. 548 "Tsaritsyno", as well as representatives of the Moscow Committee on Science and Technology. After the seminars, the teachers of the schools participating in the experiment began to "use the book about innovations in their classes." However, none of the participants of the conference could explain exactly how. Representatives of the "Enlightenment" only stressed that this is "not a separate course." Teachers, according to Kondakov, can use the book "in extracurricular classes, after school hours, as additional literature for almost any course: history, social studies, physics, chemistry." "It is possible to motivate children to innovative thinking in different subjects – from mathematics to history," the director of the publishing house summed up.
He was echoed by the author of the book Leskov. According to him, "innovations can be in any field." However, the manual itself says that it is not designed for any lesson at all. According to the recommendations for teachers, it is possible to teach "live innovation" as a component of social studies and history courses, the book can also be used in natural science workshops, or it can become a "manual for extracurricular activities."
On the cover of the book, together with Peter the Great, Sergei Korolev and Yuri Gagarin, an Orbit gum, a Lego constructor and computer disks are depicted. The illustrations in the book itself show Dolly the sheep, Google developer Sergey Brin, the Large Hadron Collider and even a frame from the movie "Water World" with Kevin Costner. "Taking into account the innovative meaning of the manual, it is proposed to build a methodology for working with it on innovative principles," the recommendations to teachers say. The book is based on the method of the "classic case (CASE) – a collection of descriptions of real situations". Teachers are invited to discuss the situations provided by the author with children in discussion groups.
There are 14 chapters in the manual, divided into sections. In the first section, homework is given, and students are invited to read a text about the fate of innovations in Russia and the world. In the next section, Leskov defines such phrases as "top-down innovations", "bottom-up innovations", "process innovations", "technological push", "demand challenge", "brainstorming" or "cross-pollination of ideas".
In each chapter, students are also presented with an "expert opinion", 14 interviews with "innovators" – officials, academics or businessmen. The fact that "nanotechnology will turn the world upside down" and that "with the help of them we will turn matter itself into a figure," says the Minister of Education Fursenko on the pages of the manual. The head of Rusnano, Anatoly Chubais, tells high school students that "in the conditions of the financial crisis, the appetite of Russian business for venture technologies is falling." "In these conditions, supplementing the economy with a strong innovative segment becomes extremely important," the head of Rusnano says. Readers are informed that another interlocutor of the Izvestia columnist, Mikhail Prokhorov, president of the ONEXIM group, was recognized as the richest man in Russia in 2008, according to the Forbes rating. Prokhorov also talks about nanotechnology, calling it a "fashionable topic", comments on a new uniform for the army from fashion designer Valentin Yudashkin and gives instructions that will help increase the "value of the investment basket". Professor Sergei Kapitsa also reports that the world has entered a deep demographic crisis and women have stopped giving birth.
The most interesting for a student, according to the author, may be the section "Innovations that won". As Leskov said at a briefing, with the help of this column about "innovative inventions", he tried to convey to the student that not only an atomic bomb, but also a paper clip can become an innovation.
In addition to the paper clip, the most voluminous section contained stories about chocolate, elevator, ballpoint pen, gum, refrigerator, electric chair, diesel, supermarket, McDonald's, Coca-Cola, Barbie, phone and Lego.
"Any teacher will read the book with pleasure. It is not edifying, it is not written down and can be a comrade. This is a very successful project, it should be promoted closer to the citizens of the country, who will need innovative thinking," Minister Fursenko admired the manual. According to the head of the Ministry of Education and Science, the book perfectly explains what innovation is, and "conveys to the guys that changes do not always bring something negative." Most of all, the minister liked the section of the manual "Aphorism is also an innovation", in which the author quotes statements of famous people, one way or another, in his opinion, related to innovations. Fursenko's favorite aphorism from the book is "Introduce innovations to change the rules of the game" (American specialist David Adeif). The author of the "successful project" Leskov, after the minister's speech, himself addressed the teacher's audience: "I wish that all your students at least partially repeat the path of Bill Gates."
(We will not reprint readers' comments. Out of delicacy. If you want, read them on the website of "Gazeta.Ru».
And on the website of the publishing house "Enlightenment" you can read the abstract, as well as the table of contents of this textbook and three selected chapters, No. 1, 2 and 9 – VM.)
Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru07.04.2010