More thinking on New Thinking...

In another life, when studying towards a degree in Architecture, we would be given a design brief for a project that would usually require the whole semster to complete. Before we could put pen to paper, we had to develop an idea or a concept, that would guide the design of the building from beginning to end. Descisions about building form, structure, detailing etc would be governed by this concept. This concept is what separated a good design from a poor one, provided it was thought through properly. God is in the details, we were told! Unfortunately, you only have to look out the window to see that we are surrounding by buildings that pay little attention to their context, or even their purpose. They add little or no value to their surroundings and the lives of the community they are supposed serve.
So what does this have to do with education? Well, give me a minute while I try and make the connection! I know there is one in there somewhere.
Both Ed (de Bono) and Ken (Robinson) define creativity as the process of having original ideas that have value. It is about looking for new ways of doing things, regardless of what it is you may be doing. However, it is not just about coming up with new ideas, as some ideas may be completely impractical. So every creative process requires evaluation. Also, creativity is not an individual process but draws from the ideas and achievements of others. It has a social dimension as it benefits greatly from collaboration and different ways of thinking. This is their vision for education (and many others as well), to "develop young people's capacities for original ideas and action" (SKR). 
In New Thinking for the New Millenium, de Bono, sorry Ed,  states that in all creative & design thinking, 'concepts' play a key role. (I worked that one out in my architecture days.) There is also a need to create ways of implementing the concept through specific and practical ideas. Well isn't that the same for education? Doesn't the concept take the form of pedagogy and the implementation is the learning experience? Does that mean that good teaching results from sound pedagogy? Not always but the problem may lie in the implementation. I have been in several schools now that use a lot of group work in their daily lessons. Given this is a social constructivist concept there should be a great deal of interaction,discussion and collaboration. However, more often than not, group work translated to desk arrangement. There is little exchange of ideas and the lesson is still teacher-centred.
So again, what does this have to do with education? Well, our education systems do nothing, according to Ken and Ed, to develop the habits and skills of creative thinking. Education is all about the past, all about 'what is'. I guess that's because we don't know how to do it any other way.
So, when we look at the contribution of technology to education, we see that the technology is brilliant but the education concepts are often outdated. In fact,the technology is far ahead of the concepts we ask it to deliver (though I do conceed this is changing, albeit slowly in education). Faster communication means nothing if there is nothing to communicate. We know from experience that building more roads to ease traffic only results in more traffic to fill the roads. Technology by itself allows value (learning) to be delivered but the value concept (pedagogy) has to be there first.The big need in the future, says Ed, is not so much for more technology but for the design of new value concepts (pedagogy).
Remembering that this book was first published in 1999 and before web 2.0 really took off, I wonder if Ed would see social networking and it's implications for education as adding value to the technology. Indeed, in many ways, the concepts that seems to underpin web 2.0 (i.e. social constructivism) add value to education itself. It is no longer enough for schools to adopt a transmissive style of education even with the technology of web 1.0. Here, the pedagogy or the message remains the same, the difference lies in the mode of delivery.
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I am reading this post over again, a day or two after I first wrote it. I must have been in some mood. I'm not sure I understand what I was trying to say, if anything at all. I was going to delete it but thought there may be something worthwhile in it after all. All I know is I am trying to find connections between my previous training in design and my future teaching. I know they exist. I know they can help me to become a better teacher. I think I have managed to articulate a few of them. Maybe someone reading this could enlighten me further!