Welcome to the Glass Age

177 textbooks and offers specialist teaching courses, often linked to conferences. Simply allowing those in education to ‘rub shoulders’ with each other and discuss issues also plays a vital role. The consolidation of automated industry over the last century has reduced the numbers employed even though output has continued to rise. To help revitalize worldwide glass education in a shrinking but nevertheless vibrant jobs market, 20+ ICG Summer and Winter Schools have been held since 2009. The Montpellier Summer School reached its 11 th edition in 2019 and audiences continue to grow; in 2018, to celebrate its first ten years, the volume ‘Teaching Glass Better’ was published (Figure 11.6). It summarizes the course contents and captures the historical development and philosophy of the schools, explaining the lessons learned and offering a framework for others to follow. The Wuhan ICG Winter School in China achieved its 5 th anniversary in October 2019 and in the same year a new school, the NASSPM (North America Summer School on Photonic Materials) was held in Quebec with great success. India has hosted two similar events and plans another, probably in 2025. The overlapping of staff across the schools and even students has helped to propagate and stimulate best practices in teaching methods. The book Teaching Glass Better celebrated 10 years of ICG Summer Schools, summarizing content and capturing their historical development. These Summer Schools for young research workers typically last a week. All have been based on similar principles, teaching key underlying subjects, which extend thinking beyond a typical undergraduate level, but then critically, encouraging a more interactive approach to build confidence in questioning conventional wisdom (Figure 11.7). Such exercises have also helped to break down the natural barriers that exist between pupils and their teachers and created many long-lasting friendships across national boundaries that have helped support people through the Ph.D studies (Figure 11.8). These schools have also been useful in passing on teaching skills among staff from different parts of the academic community. Such schools can also bring together people from very Figure 11.7. Group activities, giving everyone a voice, are an important part of the learning process and of developing new ideas. Source: Pixabay.