Today I jump started my car for the first time ever. Could this constitute CPD?
I mean, okay, it's fairly straightforward, but I did have to check how to do it, and it does involve a small amount of knowledge about batteries and electricity.
And, to be a bit serious, the Egg Race - teams of four to six engineers (and some school groups) trying to move an egg as far or as fast as possible with minimal materials - is a classic of the type of development that starts in kindergarten / primary school in how to work as a team to understand and then solve a problem. We'll all have seen many real engineering projects that fail (or at least begin to fail) because of the inability of professional engineers to do this.
A bit off thread, but we do have a problem in the UK in that schools (often in conjunction with outside organisations such as the IET) are good at setting up and running such challenges, but less good - or to be honest can't justify the time - to repeat them such that the students can learn from what went wrong and develop. So the kids that are already good at team working - or who pick the brilliant engineer to be on their team - succeed. Those that don't manage this fail, but they don't really know why.
I think there's a lesson there for our professional CPD - but as I need to pack to catch a train and a plane I'd better not try and think now what it is!
And, to be a bit serious, the Egg Race - teams of four to six engineers (and some school groups) trying to move an egg as far or as fast as possible with minimal materials - is a classic of the type of development that starts in kindergarten / primary school in how to work as a team to understand and then solve a problem. We'll all have seen many real engineering projects that fail (or at least begin to fail) because of the inability of professional engineers to do this.
A bit off thread, but we do have a problem in the UK in that schools (often in conjunction with outside organisations such as the IET) are good at setting up and running such challenges, but less good - or to be honest can't justify the time - to repeat them such that the students can learn from what went wrong and develop. So the kids that are already good at team working - or who pick the brilliant engineer to be on their team - succeed. Those that don't manage this fail, but they don't really know why.
I think there's a lesson there for our professional CPD - but as I need to pack to catch a train and a plane I'd better not try and think now what it is!
