Shift to the Future

When I wrote my first post to this blog Dec. 29, 2009, Disruption is Coming , I committed to a post every week within the themes of the future, technology, and education.  I held to that until May 6, 2012.  My wife and I went on our first European vacation in that month and both disconnected from blogging and Twitter.  Again in August, I only wrote one post and on Christmas break, skipped a week.  This past summer I skipped six weeks of blogging – it was awesome.  It would seem that blogging has become a bit of a chore for me and I’m having some difficulty with the commitment to write regularly.  I guess after 171 posts, I’m struggling to find inspiring new things I want to write about.  Perhaps I have ‘bloggers block’.  This post is a think-out-loud on some concerns I have on my mind about the three themes for this blog. The more I read about the future the more concerned I become.  Technology is “miraculous” for sure, but there are distu...

Does anyone else in a formal leadership position feel a little overwhelmed these days by the torrents of communication / information, time wasting meetings, and increased uncertainty for decision making?  I certainly do.  It can be paralyzing if you don’t rise above it.  Technology was supposed to make life easier, wasn’t it?  Unfortunately, our tools which are designed to improve our work flow often have the opposite effect.  Take email for instance, it can replace a lot of paper-based writing like memos, reports, and letters, and help with giving direction, sharing information, etc.  But, so many people misuse or overuse it.  You have probably crafted elegant emails with say three or four questions and then find that people respond to only one or two, or worse none or completely different questions.  This probably happened (I can’t remember) in the old days of paper memos but the speed of communication then was in days or weeks, not seconds....

Do you get the sense that the world has sped up?  Does time seem to be passing you by faster and faster?  Do you find that the rate of change, new products, services, and amazing capabilities is accelerating?  Well, you would not likely be alone in sensing this.  We live in unprecedented times of rapid change.  I spent a few days last week at the annual Microsoft Canadian Leadership Summit in the Microsoft Executive Briefing Centre in Redmond Washington. About 300 technology leaders from across Canada converge for an information and networking packed few days where clearly, we were treated to a drink from a fire hose, metaphorically speaking. Author Steven Johnson spoke to us about innovation based on his book “ Where Good Ideas Come From ”.  He talked about how ideas are more likely the result of a Slow Hunch than a Eureka Moment, percolating slowly over time.  Ideas often generate based on ideas mixing in ‘liquid networks’ such as coffee houses ...

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...

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...

Every so often I just have to pause to contemplate the awesomeness of our world.  Technology has certainly brought the world amazing tools and services.  I’m reading an historical fiction book “The Seekers”, book #3 in an 8 book series.  The story is set in the late 1700’s, early 1800’s in the newly formed USA.  At one point a young couple migrates west down the Ohio river, acquires 20 acres, builds a crude cabin, begins to clear land, plant corn, and own a cow.  The harsh lifestyle is astonishing.  I suspect that most of us in the developed world take for granted what we have and enjoy.  Those early settlers lived on corn mush and semi-sour milk, every day, every meal.  Their cooking, bathing, clothing, labouring, entertaining capacity was very poor.  To reach the small village near the fort to trade with others, they walked four miles through harsh terrain.  At least they had ‘central heating’ for their cabin, a fireplace!  Think...

I was fast walking a steep incline on the treadmill at the gym the other day and all around me are people BBMing, texting, tweeting, Facebooking, emailing, and sometimes talking on their mobile devices.  I thought, ‘this is crazy, can’t people escape their devices for even an hour?’.  It occurred to me that perhaps people are becoming ‘slaves of their machines’ – they are becoming obsessed . We often read about the decline in readership for magazines and newspapers.  People have moved over to reading on their machines.  TV viewers have become Internet viewers and participants, via their machines.  Entertainment has moved to becoming machine orchestrated through XBox, Kinect, PS3, Game Boy, World of Warcraft, and ‘apps’, etc..  We can’t travel without a Google or Bing map, a GPS, or a cell, er smart-phone (for safety of course).  We use stoves, ovens, microwave ovens, toasters, griddles, irons, washers, dryers, furnaces, freezers, drills, saws, coffee...

I’ve been thinking a lot about our complex world lately and how our education system does or doesn’t match what we need.  There’s a lot of buzz about the need to support 21st century or personalized learning.  Although there isn’t necessary consensus on what that means or entails, my impression is that most people recognize that our world is quite different today and is rapidly changing and our education system should adapt accordingly.  Education hasn’t necessarily evolved and transformed fast enough to fully match our world’s needs.  I’ve written before about complexity ( Education for an automated future or Complexity is Everywhere ) and I am in awe of our potential.  I’m reading a couple of excellent books right now that are quite fascinating.  One is Macrowikinomics by Don Tapscott and the other The Rational Optimist by Matt Ridley (thank-you @lisarink e for loaning this one to me).  I’m 39% through Macrowikinomics on my iPad and at p. 41 o...

I just got back from a short trip to Toronto, ON, Canada.  I used my iPad with my kindle reader to read some books on the way there and back.  It’s amazing that I can have 1/2 dozen books on a thin electronic slate, highlight and add notes, and later sync it up to “the cloud” for use later.  E-readers are disruptive technologies… While sitting in a cab cruising through the city, I wondered about the economy.  Actually, I think a lot about our economy these days.  I am overwhelmed with the complexity and magic that defines the economy.  Small shops on obscure streets, massive 50 story business towers, huge hotels, hospitals, government buildings, university facilities, restaurants, people walking everywhere, grid locked traffic with people coming and going, and so on.  At the airport, there are untold numbers of people going to and coming from hundreds or thousands of locations.  Some for pleasure and some for business.  Just one day in Toro...

Noun 1 . futuristics - the study or prediction of future developments on the basis of existing conditions – or see futurology (wikipedia) for an in-depth description… President Barack Obama’s Sep. 8, 2009 speech had some profound insights for K12 ( note, I’m not supporting any particular political view by using this quote ): “And this isn't just important for your own life and your own future. What you make of your education will decide nothing less than the future of this country. What you're learning in school today will determine whether we as a nation can meet our greatest challenges in the future.” I think that Obama is right in saying this.  Public education over the past 100 years or so has served its original purpose well – preparing students to follow rules, be on time, read, write, and calculate (I know, learning today is much broader).  But, does current curriculum which is more about today and yesterday effectively support students in leading us into our fut...