Coming out of Tokyo in 2003 as an event for young designers to meet, network and show their work in pubic, Pecha Kucha nights are now in 800 cities all over the world. For the uninitiated, Pecha Kucha is a simple, informal and snappy style of presentation where 20 images are shown for 20 seconds per image, with the speaker talking along to them as they automatically advance.
Pecha Kucha in action
Pecha Kucha was effectively used at the inaugural Navitas Learning and Teaching Forum in Sydney in March 2016. Our dynamic Learning and Teaching leaders from Navitas colleges all over the world concisely conveyed the nature and context of their businesses in less time than it takes to heat a ready-meal – just 3 minutes and 20 seconds (we only allowed them half a Pecha Kucha!).
Pecha Kucha in education and copying for innovation
While its dynamism was ideally suited for our Learning and Teaching event, how does its format meet some of the challenges we face in the classroom, enhancing learning and teaching in diverse contexts across the business?
Going a step further, what can we learn more generally about the process of ‘copying’ demonstrated here, taking ideas from one context and adapting them for use in a completely different environment? Better still, what can we learn about the virtues of copying from various different areas for better innovation and collaboration?
In the first ten slides of this Pecha Kucha presentation, Jon Hvaal argues the key points for using Pecha Kucha with students. In the second ten slides Lucy Blakemore takes us through some of the great ways people have copied as a means for innovation and how we could go about doing this ourselves. Stay tuned at the end for a few things we couldn’t quite squeeze into 6 minutes and 40 seconds!