Designed to Change

There is something seriously wrong with the way some things are designed.  My wife and I were away yesterday and I get a text from one of my kids saying “the fridge isn’t working”.  Sure enough when we get home later, it’s dead!  This is our second fridge in just over 10 years (our first was relatively expensive, the second inexpensive – didn’t seem to matter).  When I mention this to others most often people suggest that 5 years is pretty normal for a fridge.  I think fridges are designed to fail.  So, after I write this blog post we’re off hunting for a new fridge, oh joy…  I probably shouldn’t be writing this post right now in my less-than-happy-about-my-fridge state of mind.

However, as you know this is not limited to fridges and not just to products that stop working.  Think about the consumer electronics business.  Cell phones, for example, seem to be designed to be disposed of within 3 years.  Actually, even 3 years is a long time now when you look at the amount of change that occurs in 12-18 months.  Apple,  Android, and Windows phone manufacturers are certainly doing their part to drive the disposal smartphone market.  I just read an article on Zite yesterday suggesting the new iPhone 5, when available, will cause yet another massive disruption and may well be Apples (or anyone's) fastest selling phone.  Many of those who move up to that phone will be disposing of 1 and 2 year old perfectly functioning phones, many of which are recent iPhones.  We all experience this with electronics – new stuff comes out and suddenly what we just bought is no longer good enough.  I wonder how many iPad 2 owners are clamoring to purchase the iPad 3 now even though there’s relatively little “functional” difference.  What has happened to our society that we think it’s okay for so many products to be disposable?  And if you think I’m immune to this, I’m not.  I too get caught up in wanting the newest products although our TV, all 27 inches of retro CRT, still seems to serve us well with our rabbit ear antenna and digital to analogue converter…

How is it that our “environmentally conscious” society accepts the designed to change (or fail) mentality of manufacturers and marketers?  Our broken fridge is essentially not repairable and will be disposed of (not exactly sure what happens to it). What about all those cell phones, computers, TVs, etc.?  Why can’t our products be designed to last?  Not only is this model hard on our environment, it’s hard on our pocket books.

I was having a conversation with my eldest son the other day (he’s 24) about business (he runs his own) and fair wages (he’s hired two people recently).  I think it’s awesome that he is thinking this through.  He wants to pay his employees fairly for the type of work he needs them to do.  Anyway, the conversation moved over to talking about the impact of our lifestyle expectations on others.  For example, how often do we think about all the people “slaving” to produce, ever faster, our electronics, our relatively inexpensive clothing, food, shoes, etc.?  People in poorer countries are essentially working like slaves to supporting our disposable lifestyle.  I realize that what they may be paid sustains their families and without it, they may be worse off.  But, it doesn’t quite feel right does it…

We seem to be wired to expect that stuff is designed to change.  We expect the next tablet, smartphone, or car to have more features, be faster, cooler, whatever.  We’re pleased that companies are so innovative and capable of producing all these wonderful products for us.  But, isn’t it interesting that when we buy our new product we are quite pleased with our purchase, we’re happy, satisfied, etc., UNTIL, the next version or model is announced.  Suddenly, what was just bought (could be a month ago) isn’t quite as “shiny” and exciting.  I wonder what path this type of thinking will eventually lead us down.  It’s amazing how in tough economic times people have found so much disposable income to stay on this track of buy and replace a year or two later…  I don’t have any worthy answers to my questions and wonderings but I think we need to raise our consciousness around this designed to change problem and perhaps adapt the model and scale back our expectations to be more about needs and less about wants.  We need to chart a new direction.  Easy? Doubtful. Important to our future? Absolutely.

Technorati Tags: devices,economy,financial,future,values,change,appliances,environment

Complex Classrooms

I have the pleasure of regularly going out to visit with teachers and students in classrooms.  This past Thursday I visited two classrooms: a Kindergarten and a Grade 1 class.  In the Kindergarten class I was video recording a learning documentation process the teacher uses to support her students story writing.  The students came up one by one to share their pictures and in some cases, also written stories.  They were very motivated and proud to be able to do this.  The teacher used her iPod Touch to record each student explaining and/or reading their story.  The teacher then plays back the students reflections in the quiet of her home and provides written feedback in each students journal.  The kids loved that I was recording them telling their stories!

While this was going on, one of her students had a bit of a melt down.  This particular student is designated as having certain special needs and a special education assistant (SEA) was present.  This student caused quite a bit of disruption to the class, not something I see very often in my visits.  In talking to the teacher, she described another 4 or 5 students in her class who have various special needs and the complexity of managing and personalizing learning in this classroom.  I was impressed with this teacher’s calm demeanor and her fearlessness in using technology to document students learning in a noisy, challenging, and disruptive learning environment.

My second visit last Thursday took me to a Grade 1 class where the teacher took the class down memory lane back to September.  She had taught the kids about bridges, bridge design, building materials, and documented the journey through pictures and textual descriptors.  She stored her documentation in SMARTboard notebooks.  I video recorded her taking the class back in time while the kids’ memories were activated.  They started with pictures (from the Internet) of real bridges from around the world then into a sequence showing each kid drawing plans for their own bridges.  As a students’ picture of them and their plan was displayed, they would talk about their design and the relative strength their bridge may have using triangles versus other shapes.  They discussed building materials that could enable curved structures, etc.  The journey ended with pictures of the kids showing their completed bridges built from various materials and using marshmallows as the connecting “glue”.  At the end of the class the teacher asked the kids who wanted to show Mr. Kuhn their bridges and every hand went up!  I was then taken on the grand tour of their elaborate bridge structures.

In this class there were students with special needs and one SEA.  But, the complexity I want to highlight for this class though, is the learning.  I was impressed with how much the students had learned about and could elaborate on bridge design and construction.  I wondered, how would the teacher capture this journey if it weren’t for her digital camera (iPod Touch).  Pictures really are a thousand words aren’t they.  But think about this extra layer of complexity for the teacher.  She has to be always on the lookout for learning to document with pictures.  Later, she has to transfer the pictures to her computer and organize them in a digital notebook with annotations, weave the use of this documentation into reflections with students, reporting to parents, and informing her own feedback to her students.  This is a complex process to add to her teaching practice and she’s done a fabulous job of it.  Listen to her talk about starting out as a documenter:

Documenting Learning

I think that the learning environment in which teachers practice, has become quite complex.  We technologists expect and encourage teachers to adopt a variety of technology to assist and transform their teaching and student learning.  We need to remember that the context in classrooms is already complex with each student having diverse learning and special needs.  Two things are radically different today then they were when I went to school: integration of all students in classrooms and the increasing presence of technology.  It really is encouraging to see increasing examples of teachers fearlessly experimenting and adopting new practices using technology.  Especially with complex student needs, there are so many ways technology is being found to assist them.  I think in the long run, complex classrooms will increasing be transformed through the careful and thoughtful use of technology.

Technorati Tags: K12,SMARTboard,complexity,documentation,education,teaching,story,iPodTouch,learning

Self Regulation in an Always On World

The need for people to be effective at self regulation has always been important.  However, I believe its importance is greater today and increasing given the “always on world” we now live in.  When I was a kid, self regulation involved behaving properly, using proper table manners, putting my hand up in school, and being home for dinner on time.  I think things have become a little more complicated in these technology transformed times.

“Self control should increase with age due to the development of the sensory system. As the sensory system develops, people's perceptual abilities expand. For instance, children do not have a concept of time, and in this sense, they live in the present. However, as children age and develop into adults, they gradually gain the ability to comprehend the future consequences of their actions.”, Self-control. Wikipedia March 4, 2012.

Self-regulation (aka self-control) needs to be learned early on and it’s encouraging that this is something that, I understand, receives quite a bit of attention in our early learning (K-3) classrooms.  What I worry about though is what happens as young children grow up in a technology rich and highly distracting world.  Also, it’s shocking how young people and adults alike fail to self-regulate when they use amplifying social media technologies like Twitter and Facebook.  These tools too often bring the worst out in people.  When I see name calling, emotionally charged tweets from who I know to be good, intelligent people, I see a failure to self-regulate.  A lack of self-regulation when using social media can at best embarrass and at worse get someone fired or sued for defamation of character.  What we say online is who people will believe we are and it never goes away, you can’t take it back, and it’s completely and globally public!  Even if you think you’re right or it’s true, it doesn’t make it appropriate to broadcast your thoughts online.  Maybe we can’t “save” adults from themselves but our school systems certainly aught to weave self-regulation learning in, K through 12 so as to raise up a generation of thoughtful people who easily and naturally self-regulate. 

Another area where self-regulation is crucial is in managing our focus, attention, and time in a world where our technology relentlessly beckons us.  I now use a laptop, an iPad, and a Windows 7 Phone.  I recall the days when all I had access to was a desktop computer at work and the same at home.  To check e-mail at home required a “trip” downstairs to the computer and it took forever to logon to get email.  Email reading/responding was an infrequent event ‘cause it was inconvenient.  My wife, kids, and I took turns accessing the computer then where as today I think there are about 10 Internet connected devices in my home at any given time!  We now have über convenient access to email, social media, websites, ebooks, online games, online music, TV, and movies, etc.  It’s crazy how things have changed in 20 years or even the past 10.  The level of distraction today is unprecedented.  I know I struggle to leave my phone and iPad alone.  They are always present and available.   It is a significant struggle to not check if there’s a new email, tweet, or some other piece of information just waiting for me to consume and respond to.  It’s easy to cross a line and be disrespectful to those with whom you’re present by connecting to those who are not.  I think parents of young children have a seriously important job in understanding how and why their kids use technology today and guide and teach them to self-regulate their use. Reduced TV use but significantly increased handheld or online gaming is not a fair trade for kids!

Students and schools wrestle with the use of cell, smart phones, handhelds, tablets, and laptops in class.  Most teachers today see these tools as distractors not supporters of learning.  Or, think about school or District staff meetings and people with their laptops and smart phones doing email, using Twitter, or just off-task reading something else while the meeting is underway.  How can these tools possibly be useful when all they do is take us off to other places rather than remaining present and in the moment?  But hold on, this isn’t any different than passing notes in class or meetings 20 years ago, right?  Or perhaps before technology, people day dreamed more…

Although I understand the challenge teachers and meeting facilitators face, it does bother me when people blame the tools for poor behavior, being off task, etc. and ask participants to shut them off.  How can that possibly be the right answer when the tools bring so much power to your fingertips?  Tools are neither good or bad, they’re agnostic.  Behaviors though, are learned and can be modified.  In this always on world shouldn’t we be figuring out how to transform how classrooms are managed, lessons are taught and learned, and information is disseminated and transmitted?  I think so.  We should be redesigning how learning, teaching, and meeting works to maximize the beneficial use of the technology at our disposal or at least neutralize the distraction.  Otherwise, how will students and adults learn self-regulation and positive behaviors with the technology?    Howard Gardner states that “educational efforts are dedicated toward the acquisition of the appropriate disciplinary knowledge, habits of minds, and patterns of behavior” (Five Minds for the Future, Kindle 421).  Our schools are key partners with parents in instilling the discipline of self-regulation in students.

Our technology is increasing in quantity, power, convenience, accessibility and is not going away.  We had better get a handle on how we self-regulate our use of it, before it completely masters us.  We need to be masters of our technology, not the other way around.  Used effectively, technology is an enriching experience, opens doors previously closed, amplifies learning and communication, and stimulates imagination and creativity.  Embrace it and be a self-regulator.

Technorati Tags: citizenship,disruption,parents,responsibility,technology,values,HowardGardner,distraction,meetings,tools

Innovate to a Preferred Future

A lot of people are writing and speaking about innovation these days.  I hesitated to join in but it’s been on my mind lately too so why not see if I can add to the conversation.  Wikipedia (Feb. 25, 2012) starts its article on this topic with “Innovation is the creation of better or more effective products, processes, services, technologies, or ideas”.  When I read about the enormous problems facing us today and into the future, I see a rising need for more innovative thinking.  The worlds problems seem overwhelming with automated work, fuel costs and scarcity, war, public and private debt loads, education systems in need of redesign, governments buried in red tape and complexity, and the list goes on.  Small thinking isn’t going to help us solve these problems but innovation can.  The environment for learning matters tremendously as the authors of A New Culture of Learning suggest “when play happens within a medium for learning—much like a culture in a petri dish—it creates a context in which information, ideas, and passions grow” (Kindle 62).  Imagination and possibility thinking is what is needed more than ever.  We need students and adults, to get out of the box.

Our school board has approved the creation of an exciting new school called the Inquiry Hub which is the brain child of District Principal Stephen Whiffin.  Students in this school will be immersed in “an innovative, technology driven, full-time program which allows them to pursue their own learning questions by shaping their educational experience around their interests instead of structured classes”. The intentions are to unlock the potential of students to learn in innovative ways.  There is the possibility that what is learned through this school will find its way into our traditional schools to increase innovation throughout.  This is the sort of thinking we need more of.  We need to be coloring outside the lines of tradition more so that more people will be able to tackle the enormous problems faced today and in the future.

An interesting paradox is upon us.  Most traditional thinking is that more education leads to greater success and prosperity.  Well, how does that map to a future of a workerless economy?  I’ve read articles about the jobless recovery being experienced post 2008.  Previous recessions rebounded with people being hired back.  This most recent event has seen very low rehiring rates but much higher investment in machines and automation.  “In the years ahead,” Rifkin wrote, “more sophisticated software technologies are going to bring civilization ever closer to a near-workerless world” (Race Against the Machine, Kindle 118).  The authors do argue for an educational solution.  I believe that more education isn’t necessarily the answer but different learning could be.

“we are in the early throes of a Great Restructuring. Our technologies are racing ahead but many of our skills and organizations are lagging behind. So it’s urgent that we understand these phenomena, discuss their implications, and come up with strategies that allow human workers to race ahead with machines instead of racing against them” (Kindle 171)

We shouldn’t be like “[m]ost economists [who] aren't taking these worries very seriously. The idea that computers might significantly disrupt human labor markets—and, thus, further weaken the global economy—so far remains on the fringes” (Kindle 142).  Education and the world of work is where innovation really needs to play a key role in our future.  But, the question is, can our current education system as we know it with current curriculum and practices, meet the challenge?  I don’t think so.  Can it change and innovate fast enough?  I hope so.  Author Charles Leadbetter speaks about the 7 C’s of innovation.  Crisis, the first ‘C’, “generates focus, urgency, sharing, and new models”.  He includes Challenge which involves “asking stupid questions, supporting useful deviants, and supporting the future”.  We have many places in our world in a state of crisis, even our own province of British Columbia is faced with overwhelming debt, rapidly rising costs, political dysfunction, a dissatisfied population who relentlessly demands more services but simultaneously demands less taxes (seriously, how can that work?).  We have an education system which is actually pretty good (for today) but doesn’t evolve fast enough (it’s changes at a glacial pace) to provide for the much needed innovation.  In a world where “computers improve so quickly that their capabilities pass from the realm of science fiction into the everyday world not over the course of a human lifetime, or even within the span of a professional’s career, but instead in just a few years” (Race Against the Machine, Kindle 233).

I think we humans have been designed rather well to be adaptable, to generate new thinking and ideas, to overcome seemingly impossible obstacles.  I do think we have reason to have hope as we face the worlds problems.  Tools like “the city and the Web possess an undeniable track record at generating innovation” (Where Good Ideas Come From, Kindle 220).  “The trick to having good ideas is not to sit around in glorious isolation and try to think big thoughts. The trick is to get more parts on the table” (Kindle 515) or “a good idea is a network” (Kindle 522).  Connecting and networking minds, face to face (cities) and virtually matters to innovation.  Educational environments like our new Inquiry Hub are important “to make your mind more innovative, you have to place it inside environments that share that same network signature: networks of ideas or people that mimic the neural networks of a mind exploring the boundaries of the adjacent possible” (Kindle 546).  Mixing ideas causes the impossible to become possible.  Education is a key answer then, but we need it to be less rigid and content driven, and more about inquiry, problem solving, projects, invention, creation, play, and passion.  We need to weave the core knowledge, skills, and behaviors our society values, into a fundamentally different model for learning.  There’s certainly a lot of talk in BC about this but what we need now is flexibility and action.  Now is the time to learn differently, be immersed in innovation, and successfully face the problems in front of us.

Technorati Tags: 21stcentury,automation,economy,education,future,innovation,learning,machines,ideas,CharlesLeadbetter,StephenWhiffin

Lifelong Professional Learning is Essential

What does it really mean to call oneself a "professional"? For me, there's an implication that a professional is working in a field that is knowledge intensive and requires regular ongoing practice to become and remain highly accomplished and valuable to their clients.

Wikipedia’s entry for Professional includes:

1. Expert and specialized knowledge in field which one is practicing professionally
2. Excellent manual/practical and literary skills in relation to profession

In our rapidly changing world, professionals should expect to be regularly honing and upgrading their skills and knowledge so as to remain relevant and current in their chosen field.  Notice the reference to “practicing professionally”.  To practice involves the individual or professional in this context, taking some action on their part “to improve, to learn, to solve problems, to enhance or refine skills, to maintain skills”.  Malcolm Gladwell in Outliers claims that “researchers have settled on what they believe is the magic number for true expertise: ten thousand hours”.  He also says that “[p]ractice isn't the thing you do once you're good. It's the thing you do that makes you good”.  Who then, is responsible for a professional's ongoing learning, for improving and maintaining one’s professional practice?  I believe that individual professionals need to shift their learning into a higher gear to survive!

As technology continues to invade all aspects of our personal and professional lives, the answer to that question has to be "us" as in each of us being responsible for our own learning. How can we expect our employers to be responsible for this? Sure, employers should invest in training of their people but when someone says "I don't know how to do that" is training necessarily the right answer? Or, should a professional be expected to take charge of their learning and proactively keep their knowledge current, improve their skills, and develop new skills all in the name of being the best they can be for their clients?  Shouldn’t professionals be fearless learners?

I was in session three of a series this week with about 30 teachers continuing our learning about cooperative learning strategies. These sessions, both our time and any related costs, are paid for by our employer and for teachers by their union. However, if each individual did not invest substantially more time learning, both as job embedded and on their personal time, they could not possibly gain the benefits these strategies provide. As the facilitator reminded us, it takes 10 years or 10000 hours to become an expert at something. We won't accomplish that through a few workshops, it takes hard work and an ongoing time commitment. The teachers involved in this series who will benefit most are those who invest the time to make the strategies part of their professional practice.  I’ve been practicing these new strategies with my own staff – it takes a lot of time to become comfortable with new skills and you have to embrace the possibility of failure.  By the way, anyone who believes teaching is a simple profession should spend some time with teachers learning about good pedagogy and watch them as practitioners.  I used to naively believe that teaching was a fairly straightforward profession.  Learning along side and observing teachers has been an eye opener for me with respect to the complexity of the teaching profession!

It worries me when I hear about teachers who struggle to turn on a laptop computer or with basic concepts and uses of computers and digital tools and services. Sure, tablets like the iPad make "computing" simpler and more learnable but they don't replace a laptop, certainly not for an information worker like a teacher. I read recently a blog post written by a teacher, advocating that we are becoming 3:1, 3 devices (laptop, tablet, smartphone) per person. I would tend to agree, for information workers as each device has it's own strengths with some overlap. Professionals such as teachers need to become more comfortable learning new tools and adapting their practice along the way.  Being able to easily move amongst a laptop, tablet, and smartphone is becoming an essential skill for professionals.  Teachers need to take responsibility for investing time to learn the new tools viewed as valuable for them and their students.  Professionals must be willing to adapt their way of working as new tools and options materialize.

Chris Wejr through his recent post about teacher training talks about these expectations for new entrants to the teaching profession.  Supporting my argument here, he states that “we should have an expectation that teachers should be able to use technology not as a separate course but as a way in which students learn” and more importantly, “[t]echnology should not be something that stops in teacher training programs”.  I completely agree and add that this must be a lifelong expectation.  Technology is completely changing our world.  Charles Leadbetter stated recently during a conference session that “you don't learn to swim standing on the side of the pool”.  Teachers need to “get into the pool” with their students and continuously try, learn, fail, and succeed with new tools and options that support learning and teaching.

My employer and those I serve (teachers, students, principals, my staff, managers, executives, Board members) expect me, a professional, to be continuously immersed in learning and improving my knowledge and skills.  My relevance and value to them and to our mission as an organization, would be fleeting if it were not for my continuous learning.  I accomplish this through having a mind that is open to learning, being self-directed, curious, and willing to try and fail, until I get it.  This I believe is a key mindset for any professional.  Your expertise and value, learned during your “training” as a professional has a very limited shelf life in a world of rapid technology driven change.  Your value to your clients, to your students, depends on you having a lifelong self-directed, own-your-learning, orientation to professional learning!

Technorati Tags: education,knowledge,learning,professional,responsibility,staffdevelopment,teacher,technology,CharlesLeadbetter,Malcolmgladwell,expert

What Motivates You

I committed to writing a weekly blog post back in December 2009 and haven’t missed one yet.  Some weeks, actually many, I get to the weekend and have no idea what to write about.  My wife Shelley and will kick blog titles around while drinking our morning coffees (she blogs weekly as well over here) until something resonates.  She came up with the idea to write about motivation today and I scooped it (she’s a sharing person).

mo·ti·va·tion /moh-tuh-vey-shuhn / noun

1. the act or an instance of motivating, or providing with a reason to act in a certain way. Synonyms: motive, inspiration, inducement, cause, impetus.

2. the state or condition of being motivated: We know that these students have strong motivation to learn.

Blogging for me is an outlet for my ideas.  My blog posts do not attract a lot of comments but my blog averages around 350-400 visitors from around the world with 1000-1400 page views per week.  This audience or readership definitely motivates me to write.  Having an audience makes me feel obligated to write regularly and with consistent quality, purpose, and depth.  If you read my blog regularly, you’ll find I tend to stick with topics involving technology, education, and the future but usually from a philosophical perspective.  I am a rather introspective person and like to think deeply about things, especially things that are bothering / worrying me, or that I’m super interested in or excited about.  It is really encouraging to receive direct emails from people saying how they enjoy my blogging.  Or, when I bump into people through my work or in a conference setting who want to meet me to tell me how much they enjoy my writing.  That is a motivator for sure.  Interestingly, in high school and college, I hated English and writing.  Fast forward to today, and I love it.  Obviously, the right motivators were not there during my formal education.  It was merely a means to an end.  How many students feel this same way?  Shouldn’t we be tapping into each students motivations to learn?  Isn’t that a key element of “personalized learning”?

Along with Chris Kennedy and Kris Magnusson, I was asked by Bruce Beairsto in December to keynote a session “Targeting Technology for Maximum Student Benefit” for the SFU Centre for Educational Leadership and Policy.  We invested time developing the theme, scenario, agenda package, and many many hours into designing and creating our own presentations.  There was no financial compensation for doing this.  I accepted this challenge for a few reasons:

• an opportunity to speak to an important audience
• an opportunity, an honour actually, to be asked to keynote with two leading BC educators (it was a little intimidating…)
• the topic and the scenario is one I think, write, and talk about often and is a key focus area for my work
• I enjoy public speaking, especially on topics I’m super interested in
• I love to share stories of students and teachers undertaking interesting learning activities with educational technology

I will be facilitating a professional development session on social media for a group of principals and vice principals (PVP’s) in my school district this coming Friday.  Besides delivering some content about social media, we will focus primarily on the purpose for, mechanics of, and hands-on use of Twitter.  My hope from this session is that they will be motivated to commit to use Twitter in their professional practice.  If you’re interested, my unfinished Prezi that will guide the session is available here.  I hope each person will discover their own motivation to open the door of possibility by incorporating Twitter into their daily journey.  Many of us often say “Twitter is the best pro-d I’ve ever experienced”.  I hope for our PVP’s that they experience this for themselves.  Similarly, I would love to help our PVP’s become “life-long bloggers”.  I believe PVP’s can offer so much insight, knowledge, and experience to people through a professional blog.  Their voice is important.  Perhaps you’re a principal and you could offer and share your own experience and motivation for blogging and using Twitter.

Think about young people and gaming, sports, music, or just fun for a moment.  Generally speaking, do they need to be motivated by others to pursue their interests?  Not usually.  They take to things they are passionate about ‘like a duck to water’ (sorry, had to).  My point is, shouldn’t their schooling experience be personalized to their passions, to what motivates them?  I’m thinking more of the process, technique, or methods but also some of the content.  Educational content should be clearly purposeful and the relevance for kids made clear.  Another anecdote…  I used to see no point to history but it seems as I’ve grown older, history has become a fascination for me (The Future of History, Digital Immersive History Machine) and I really enjoy reading historical fiction as well.  I now see the point to learning from our past.

As educators and government officials in British Columbia discuss, debate, and speculate about the future of learning through the BC Education Plan, I hope motivation is a key element.  I do believe that some learning experiences should be “painful” (not necessarily enjoyable for the participant) as we humans seem to experience deep learning through difficult situations, “lessons learned”.  Also, there is a lot of content important to learn so as to be a productive contributing citizen that we may not choose as it isn’t interesting to us.  But, imagine for a moment a school experience for kids where, an arbitrary, 80% of their learning experiences were well aligned with what motivates them.  How might that improve student learning success, results on high stakes exams, their lifelong potential?  What motivates you?

Technorati Tags: K12,blogging,conference,education,personalized learning,twitter,writing,SFU,BC Education Plan,history,motivation,motivate

The Limits of Complexity

I am increasingly aware of the complexity of “the system”.  Think about your place in the world and then consider the layers and walls around you that have been built up over time in “the system”.  Those of us that work for “the education system” would view things differently then say a plumber, electrician, or politician might.  Regardless, we all encounter complexity whether we choose to or not.  I’m primarily thinking about organizational complexity here.  Organizations tend to naturally become complex over time.  They become very difficult to work within, to accomplish things through, and become very expensive to operate.

“Few things can doom a “system” faster than excessive complexity, which then collapses into chaos.”, Is America in Danger of Collapsing (Feb. 5, 2012)

I probably read to broadly, too many obscure articles and books, but I see a pattern emerging: complexity is making our systems unsustainable.  Think of the costs of health care, education, law enforcement, roads and bridges, and governments.  A simple example, a friend recently took a job in one of the health care regions of British Columbia (BC) in an area of information technology (IT).  Health care IT in BC has in the past 5 years gone through an amalgamation.  She describes a system of differing standards, layers of management complexity, bureaucracy, turf wars, posturing, an impossibility to get things done, etc.

“A bureaucracy is an organization of non-elected officials of a government or organization who implement the rules, laws, and functions of their institution, and are occasionally characterized by officialism and red tape”, Wikipedia (Feb. 5, 2012)

Think about the levels of government our modern societies have built.  The implications of continued growth of complexity are serious: “[f]ew would argue that the enormous complexity of the gargantuan US Federal Government is a huge and dangerously expensive problem. The question is: Just how long can things go the way they have been going, before the US collapses into chaos?”, Is America in Danger of Collapsing (Feb. 5, 2012).  The article goes on to forecast the collapse of the US by 2017 and the European Union by 2013, unless something significant changes!

I work as a manager for a school district in BC which has two unions, one for teachers and a second for support staff.  I deal with the complexity of labor contracts on a regular basis.  I actually think unions serve a valuable purpose to protect the interests of workers and to keep management in check.  This is a good thing.  However, the challenge is how organizational complexity and cost to operate grows over time as power struggles play out between unions and employers.  Red tape and complex rules develop and almost no one actually understands them.  Over time this gets worse and worse as managers and employees try to interpret the rules, make mistakes, and through difficult grievance processes generate more red tape / rules that are even more complicated to understand.  Add to that the untold pages of policies, procedures, regulations, and “practices” and you get a picture of a complex environment.  Eventually nothing seems to make sense related to the organization’s purpose for being.  It’s a wonder that any real work gets done!  Now scale this out for BC to the other 59 school districts, 1000’s of cities, aboriginal peoples, provincial government ministries, and then across Canada including federal government ministries, and all the politicians, judges, lawyers, and public sector contractors.  There is an incredible amount of cost involved in running complex societies.  What value, or what costs to society, do these layers of complexity add?  How do we reverse course?

Thomas Homer-Dixon in The Upside of Down, Catastrophe, Creativity, and the Renewal of Civilization states that “[t]oday's converging energy, environmental, and political-economic stresses could cause a breakdown of national and global order”.  He does an amazing job of relating our times to that of the Roman Empire.  The ultimate downfall of the Roman Empire was its complexity.  When I read his book a few years back, the parallels to our society seemed eerily similar.  Ultimately, complexity takes on a life of its own and if its course is not corrected, “the system” collapses.  Familiar examples of our system in crisis include personal and public debt, the cost of health care, old age pension, pensions in general, unrest, poverty, water scarcity, etc.  All of these are in some way related to our complexity, which costs untold sums of money.  We who are affluent certainly enjoy the lifestyle complexity has brought us.  But, is our lifestyle, is our complexity, sustainable into the future?  I wonder…

I don’t want to leave you feeling worried that the world as we know it is about to end.  The good news is that we have been designed to be very resilient.  There are highly intelligent people among us all and we more often than not find solutions to very complex challenges.  But, I think we need to be sure not to have our heads in the sand thinking everything will just continue to grow and improve our lives as we’ve enjoyed to date.  I read somewhere recently that the baby boomer generation is the only generation in history to be more affluent than both their parents and their offspring.  Isn’t it time that we “somehow” correct course?  Our kids are depending on it.  John Dewey “continually argues that education and learning are social and interactive processes, and thus the school itself is a social institution through which social reform can and should take place”, Wikipedia (Feb 5, 2012).  Somehow our schools, our curriculum, need to start steering this generation to a simpler future.  Complexity has limits and once the limit is crossed, history tells a story of chaos and starting over.  That sounds far more painful than correcting course.  Educators have influence over the next generation, I hope they are able to use it to help the next generation begin to choose a better way and reduce society’s complexity!

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