Categories: RattleBag and Rhubarb

Fly a plane to the future

Launch your ideas into the future. This is the Million Futures site where you see a blue sky, fluffy clouds and circling paper planes. Each plane contains an answer to one of the questions representing people’s views on the future of education and the skills that will matter. Read a few, launch your own.

It is part of a joint project conducted by the Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF) (UK) and Futurelab. It’s a novel way of consulting the public, getting people thinking and identifying ideas about the challenges ahead.

Here’s a screenshot of the six questions circling the central question:

What of today’s education do you want to see in 2025?

Click on a question and you have the chance to toss your thoughts into the air. Click a plane and you can read someone else’s answer. The nature of the web means that the UK will be getting answers globally.

As a way of gathering and aggregating ideas from everywhere this idea is innovative, playful and fun. You can also learn how to make a real (paper) plane.

What a clever idea. What a great way  to consult the public on vital matters of planning and policy. The responses wll be published on the Beyond Current Horizons website and used to inform long term planning for education in the UK. i can imagine all kinds of uses such a tool. How long before we can put this to work in the PDS community as a way of testing ideas, gathering opinions, identifying challenges, exploring differences and finding common ground?

Josie Holford

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