Shift to the Future

How much do you think about the traces of you, that you leave behind as you engage more and more with technology?  There has been a not so subtle intrusion into what used to be our private lives where a lot of what we do and say is now recorded.  Notice how apps on our smartphones want access to our photos, contacts, and location.  Sure you can deny such access but then the value of the apps diminishes significantly, often to zero.  Do you remember which apps you have given the go ahead to track your movements, your buying habits, your interactions with others, etc.?  We use our digital tools in very trusting ways not really thinking about what the companies behind them might do with all that data about us.  Google makes something like 97% ($32M) of their revenue from advertising – actually from us.  Our use of their tools generates tremendously valuable data about human behavior including purchasing habits.  They really should be paying us for o...

I’ve noticed that some people are abandoning Facebook or Twitter, or at a minimum, removing the apps from their smartphones.  A colleague of mine was finding it difficult to focus in the present when with real people while his smartphone buzzed with new Facebook and Twitter posts commanding his attention.  My eldest son disabled his Facebook account – he found that he was wasting too much time there, not getting to important things.  We were chatting as a family recently about how ‘friends’ build up in Facebook and talked about deleting all those who aren’t really friends (or family) – I did and so did my second son – it reduced the noise level.  Add to the mix Twitter, Google +, Pinterest, LinkedIn, About.Me, Flickr, Diigo, Yelp, Skype, Strava Cycle, Prezi, Instagram, and it does tend to become overwhelming doesn’t it.  However, I think social media tools are super useful for sharing, learning, and staying in touch, but users of these must learn to self-regul...

I can’t believe how fast this past year has gone by.  It’s almost like we’re in a time warp or something.  I suspect technology has something to do with that.  Things change so quickly now, it’s really hard to keep up.  I wonder what 2013 has in store for us?  Will there be new gadgets that blow our minds?  Will there be breakthroughs in robotics where more work is performed by machines?  How might learning and teaching be changed by technology? I was watching a TV piece on the food channel today about how those chocolate oranges are made, assembled, packaged, and shipped.  I had no idea how automated the process is.  It’s quite amazing or perhaps alarming, how machines have taken on more work that not too many years ago, required human beings.  Now in factories of all sorts, the humans are really serving the machines, not the other way around.  I’ve written previously about automation and it’s looming impact on us.  Automat...

I know, a bit of a harsh title for this post but I got your attention…  Seriously though, networking has for the most part always been important to being successful in whatever you pursue.  I think technology though has significantly amplified the importance of networking.  I believe that increasingly, in our rapidly evolving digital work and learning places, those that figure out and embrace the new forms of networking will succeed at what they do more so than those that don’t.  If you’re not on the path to networking yet, maybe now’s the time to take the first step. Friday was my last day with Coquitlam School Board and Monday will be my first with Vancouver.  I didn’t realize how many social networks I had an identity in until I started to change them for this move.  I had used my Coquitlam email address for most so I had to update all the digital spaces I participate in.  My advice after this task is that you consider using your personal email ad...

It’s interesting, actually encouraging, that with all the modern ways we have available to us to connect with each other, we still like to meet together face to face .  There’s just something inherently human and fulfilling about being together in the same physical space, shaking hands, looking each other in the eye, seeing facial expressions, and hearing the other person’s voice, live.  We travel all around the world to see amazing places and things, face to face .  I wonder though how things may get blurry with future, yet to be invented, digital devices? Last Tuesday a colleague and I received 10 principals from Denmark who were interested in our system of schooling and examples of educational technology.  We toured three schools visiting five classrooms.  They were able to have a great experience talking to teachers and students about their use of iPads to transform learning, various immersive uses of technology, technology used to support English as a sub...

I don’t know about you but I often wonder about the pace of invention and innovation in our world.  There are marvels being envisioned, designed, engineered, and produced all the time.  Many inventions are meant to improve our lives in some way.  While driving the country side of Germany in May , we say many wind farms.  These are pretty cool devices to see.  Harnessing wind power to generate electricity is a good use of invention to try to tackle the problem of less clean technologies that power our always on lives. As I get older, I’m looking forward to the results of research into personalized health care which might yield amazing improvements in how disease is detected and dealt with.  Imagine smart “drugs” that are actually super miniature computers, nanobots, programmed to be compatible with your DNA and once injected, rapidly seek out specific diseased cells.  Once found, the nanobots rearrange at a molecular level, the cell structure to corre...

“[Alice] ponders what the world is like on the other side of a mirror's reflection. Climbing up on the fireplace mantel, she pokes at the wall- hung mirror behind the fireplace and discovers, to her surprise, that she is able to step through it to an alternative world .  …Upon leaving the house (where it had been a cold, snowy night), she enters a sunny spring garden where the flowers have the power of human speech”, Wikipedia Nov 27, 2011 . I participated earlier this week in an #edchat where people from all around the world weigh-in on a topic via twitter.  It’s kind-of like some other world, it’s not “real” rather it’s a virtual exchange of ideas.  It’s an exhausting experiencing trying to keep up to the rapid stream of ideas and to contribute your own.  I dropped in a bit after it started so am not entirely sure of the specific topic but I believe it was a question of whether technology improves or is essential to learning, teaching, and assessment. I also dro...

Take pause for a moment and consider the vast sea of ideas active in our world right this second…  Can you picture it?  At any given time, billions of people collectively generate billions of ideas.  Unfortunately, most ideas never leave a person’s head or are only ever shared with a family member, or perhaps one or two close friends.  Ideas die prematurely every day because they are not able to take root in “fertile ground”.  Ideas need to mix with other ideas and they need to encounter support and experience conflict to survive and grow. In our increasingly digital world, ideas have never had it so good!  When a person chooses to enter in and engage with others in online spaces, it’s like a veil is lifted for them and they see what was hidden from them previously, a connected sea of ideas.  You can see the mixing of ideas take place through Twitter, Blogs, Wikis, Youtube, TED, Google +, Facebook, and hundreds of other interesting spaces. I’ve jus...

There are clear examples of inequality in our midst.  This morning I was reading some articles about poverty levels, lack of access to clean water, millions of Americans and others pushed in recent years from the middle to the poor class (2008 meltdown), and the 10’s of thousands of Japanese impacted by the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami.  I wrote about greed and the economy a few months ago and the news and the blogosphere are rife with articles about unequal distribution of wealth, food, property, education, disasters, and opportunities.  History is replete with stories of people living with inequality.  In my assessment I would say the gaps are increasing not getting smaller.  Public education has definitely been a reasonably successful equity builder over the years.  But I would not call education an equalizer.  Nothing in our world is that. I was having a tweet-convo yesterday with a colleague about the inequity that schools and communities ...

I just read another blog post questioning the need for students to have their own digital tools and advocating for more face time with each other and their teacher.  I find the debate, along with some of the commenters on that post, to be somewhat baseless.  As we all know, tools on their own or in the hands of the uninitiated, are useless, misused, or even dangerous.  Why is it that educators continue to question the value of the greatest learning tool of all time – the computer (and it’s derivatives)?  I think the answers might include a fear of losing control, of not being the center of and key to student learning.  I understand.  I see the disruption that technology is creating for my area of expertise – Information Technology – and worry about the same things.  For me, that means that I have to either figure out my place in the disrupted real world or be displaced… not something I take lightly for sure.  As to tools versus face to face, my v...