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Ewan McIntosh

Edinburgh, Scotland

I help create the most beautiful schools in the world, inside and out

Recent Activity

To look forward, don’t beat a retreat

Defining strategy is the most important work a leadership team can do. The last place they should go to do it is a retreat. It’s January, and wherever I look online I see so many friends’ new year’s resolutions, strategies to make 2019 a little better than 2018, perhaps. And I see many wittily launch jibes about how they don’t... Continue reading

Posted Jan 6, 2019 at Ewan McIntosh | Design Thinking, Education & Learning

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I'm not entirely down and out with this blog... I've got a plan to resurrect it, cross posting and some DIFFERENT writing here from elsewhere. At the moment, I'm living with a redesigned template from years ago that doesn't fit my needs any more. It might end up being a summer project to overhaul, though. Bear with me!

Commented Jan 22, 2018 on Ewan's latest writing on Medium at Ewan McIntosh | Design Thinking, Education & Learning

Ewan's latest writing on Medium

For the past 18 months I've been finding it easier to tap into communities on Medium, the blogging service, and our team have a 'Magazine' blog where I've taken to writing a lot more frequently than here. Please have a look, and you'll find out that far from neglecting this blog, I've really got back into loving writing! https://medium.com/notosh Continue reading

Posted Jan 18, 2018 at Ewan McIntosh | Design Thinking, Education & Learning

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How do you nudge teachers into online coaching? 2016 in Travel

Once again, I've analysed my year of travel to see if I'm any closer to reducing it year on year. It's an annual habit, and if often kicks off new ideas that might affect my team's next year of work. The good answer is: yes, there is less travel! And not just that, but having reduced the schlepping I do,... Continue reading

Posted Dec 27, 2016 at Ewan McIntosh | Design Thinking, Education & Learning

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MONO Decision-making: Minimum Oblique Non-Obvious

When you want someone to do something, you tell them so. In companies and schools alike, we've found a polite way to tell people what to do by writing visions, missions and all sorts of other PDFs that languish on the C-drive, bound polypocketed books that sit deep in the cupboard under your teacher desk. Education is filled with jargon... Continue reading

Posted Jun 2, 2016 at Ewan McIntosh | Design Thinking, Education & Learning

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Ten years on from the very first unconference for educators: TeachMeet is 10

This Tuesday, I want you to join me in the pub. It’s your homework. There will be a test. My old tutor from teacher training college, David Muir, giggles as he types up some gems being shared over a beer between two other men: John Johnston, a primary teacher from Glasgow, and Will Richardson, an international keynoter whose formal talk... Continue reading

Posted May 21, 2016 at Ewan McIntosh | Design Thinking, Education & Learning

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Don't be scared. Ne sois pas effrayé

Twitter's biggest contribution to the world might be the art of synthesis. There's a lot of talk about how Twitter is on its last legs, how the bubble will burst. As a business (or lack of one) that might be true, but what the format has done is promote a new form of writing. I've spent the last two weeks... Continue reading

Posted Mar 25, 2016 at Ewan McIntosh | Design Thinking, Education & Learning

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2015 Travel: Han Solo could do it in 878 milliseconds

A confession: I quietly love flying. This year, I've done 163,581 miles of it. I love that when you fly a lot, the airport social media staff say 'hello' on Twitter when you arrive and the cabin crew on your home route (or even on the Brisbane-Dubai non-stop route) recognise you from last time. I like getting great service, and... Continue reading

Posted Dec 28, 2015 at Ewan McIntosh | Design Thinking, Education & Learning

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It's high time for designers to get out of the way of design thinking

A prospective client sent me a link to this in-depth article on IBM's design thinking revolution, where Phil Gilbert, IBM's General Manager of Design, has hired over 1000 designers into the firm, and pushed for over 8000 of its managers and staff to get 'trained' in design thinking. They have even created specific design centres across the firm, with design... Continue reading

Posted Nov 24, 2015 at Ewan McIntosh | Design Thinking, Education & Learning

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The psychological effect of the internet...

NetworkEffect.io. My friend Lauren puts it this way: 'an ethernet cable into your brain'. I agree. What did it do for you? Continue reading

Posted Oct 12, 2015 at Ewan McIntosh | Design Thinking, Education & Learning

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Teachers make meaningful, pragmatic strategy for learning

So much school strategy is thunder and lightning, no rain. Teachers don't know how to use it at 9am on Monday morning, students never see it, let alone know how to take their part in making the strategy happen for real. Not in our latest workshop in Sweden. We've been working with our Swedish partners Lin Education, with colleague Bonnie... Continue reading

Posted Sep 30, 2015 at Ewan McIntosh | Design Thinking, Education & Learning

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What it means to be visionary

I'm working on a project where we're trying to inspire engineers to think beyond improving the existing objects and services in our world, and invent what we don't even know we don't even know yet. We're getting them to bump into their own unknown unknowns. This Steve Jobs video, above, is from 1997, where he describes in anecdote how he... Continue reading

Posted Aug 31, 2015 at Ewan McIntosh | Design Thinking, Education & Learning

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The weakness of the network to nurture curiosity

While search technology made the process of seeking the answers to our questions easier and quicker, social technology and our networks have had a paradoxical effort. Has the ease of 'asking' numbed our curiosity to investigate unknown knowns for ourselves? There’s a strange paradox at work here. We live in an era where information is more freely available and easily... Continue reading

Posted Jul 26, 2015 at Ewan McIntosh | Design Thinking, Education & Learning

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The unknown unknowns - test out your ideas

Here are two great things any educator could try in their learning spaces when they get back to school, or to their office, or their library. Continue reading

Posted Jul 19, 2015 at Ewan McIntosh | Design Thinking, Education & Learning

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Celebrating 10 years of edu.blogs.com - could we have yesterday's time with today's thinking?

It's ten years today since I wrote my first blog post for me, and I wish we could have today's thinking with the space and time of a decade ago. 1999 I've blogged since around November 1999, one of the first users of a new, shaky service... Blogger. My first one was, as a student teacher, some kind of "making... Continue reading

Posted Jul 14, 2015 at Ewan McIntosh | Design Thinking, Education & Learning

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"I like it" is not good enough

Creative conflict is the ability to agree to disagree, and use the disruption of a disagreement to make your work better. It relies on the partners in disagreement to both be on top of their game, both of them respectful of the other's views on how something might be made better. Teachers seek this creative, quality feedback discourse every day... Continue reading

Posted Jul 7, 2015 at Ewan McIntosh | Design Thinking, Education & Learning

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When a Snow Queen starts a school: the no-grades route to University

No grades (ever), no sitting down at desks, and harnessing student boredom as a motivator to create and explore might seem an odd recipe for academic success and entry to university, but that is exactly what one of Scotland's newest schools is attempting to do. Drumdruan Upper School was created a few years ago by Scottish actress Tilda Swinton, star... Continue reading

Posted Jun 16, 2015 at Ewan McIntosh | Design Thinking, Education & Learning

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Why education needs more fuzzy thinking

It’s been a decade since I first heard the education conference cliché that we are preparing our kids for a future we don’t even understand. I argue that since then we've done little about it, in this week's Editorial in the Times Educational Supplement. Ten years ago, that wasn’t really true. In fact, the immediate future was pretty predictable between... Continue reading

Posted May 30, 2015 at Ewan McIntosh | Design Thinking, Education & Learning

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Do we actually want to close the achievement gap?

I end this small run of blog posts with the question posed by Professor Brian Boyd at the beginning of our evening: Do we want to close the achievement gap? We know we can close the gap. It’s been done or almost been done before in Scottish education, but the answers have been ignored as they pass us by. The... Continue reading

Posted May 18, 2015 at Ewan McIntosh | Design Thinking, Education & Learning

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Do schools ever want to partner with business?

“Teachers like to agree with each other, when we talk about learning. It’s hard to change that, when the model we have wanted to make work has nonetheless been failing for 40 years.” Professor Brian Boyd No area has remained up there in the contentiousness charts in Scotland as the notion of business and education working together to do something... Continue reading

Posted May 18, 2015 at Ewan McIntosh | Design Thinking, Education & Learning

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If you want a kid to become a doctor, get them into operations

Juliette Murray was, like me, a kid at school who got 5 “A”s, which in the West of Scotland put a certain degree of pressure on one’s shoulders to study either medicine or law. I studied European Law, and became a teacher - that's what a European Law degree does to you. She studied medicine and is today a practicing... Continue reading

Posted May 18, 2015 at Ewan McIntosh | Design Thinking, Education & Learning

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Does your country need you? One out of five kids say "no"

Almost one in five young people in Scotland wake up in the morning wondering if their country needs them. In a country that has in many ways never felt so optimistic and excited about its future, this should be a momentous wakeup call, a call-to-arms for the whole community. The line comes from the opening page of Sir Ian Wood’s... Continue reading

Posted May 18, 2015 at Ewan McIntosh | Design Thinking, Education & Learning

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Whole-school language of learning, or everyone for themselves?

A large part of NoTosh's time with schools is spent helping leaders and teachers decide upon common languages of learning. Having a shared vocabulary to describe what we're doing means we spend less time working out what we mean, and more time talking through the nuances of what makes one piece of practice exceptional and another less so - and... Continue reading

Posted May 17, 2015 at Ewan McIntosh | Design Thinking, Education & Learning

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Making isn't as important as the design thinking dispositions that come with it

In the Designing Spaces for Learning Masters subject I wrote and teach at Charles Sturt University, there is one week spent on Experimental Spaces. Part of that module is on making and maker culture. I purposefully didn't dote an entire one of my sixteen weeks on making, but write about it as a type of activity requiring a type of... Continue reading

Posted May 8, 2015 at Ewan McIntosh | Design Thinking, Education & Learning

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If the Scottish National Party holds the balance of power in Westminster, what would it mean for English education policy?

If the Scottish National Party holds the balance of power in Westminster, what would it mean for English education policy? In 48 hours the United Kingdom goes to the polls for its Westminster Parliamentary Election, choosing a new Government no matter the result. The Scottish National Party (SNP) has been at the centre of debates this past week as they... Continue reading

Posted May 5, 2015 at Ewan McIntosh | Design Thinking, Education & Learning

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