Shift to the Future

If you read my last post , you’ll know that I attended the 2011 World Future Society annual conference last week.  Days 3 and 4 of the conference had quite the array of sessions to choose from.  As a short detour from this post topic, my 11:00 session on Sunday was canceled and I struck up a conversation with a guy while in line for a coffee.  We ended up talking for over an hour about politics, health care, taxes, forms of government, war, religion, economics, etc.  This guys was brilliant (PhD Economics, strategist in the US Navy’s ‘think tank’ in Washington, DC) and our talk was as good or better than any conference session I’ve experienced.  Isn’t it amazing how you can get so engrossed in a deep intellectual discussion with a complete stranger?  I think that online learning practices should require connecting students to brilliant people for the purpose of engaging in deep learning – it’s a powerful thing. Edie Weiner (president) and Arnold Brown ...

I am attending the World Future Society ’s annual conference here in beautiful Vancouver, BC, Canada.  I spent the last two days immersed in an Education Summit focused on education and the future.  Last night at the opening plenary session, we heard from leadership teacher, Lance Secretan , author of The Spark, the Flame and the Torch: Inspire Self. Inspire Others. Inspire the World.   Lance spoke to us about topics such as “Destiny: Why am I here?” or higher purpose, “Character: How will I Be?” or how do I want to be known, and “Calling: What will I Do? or what difference will I make”.  He refers to this as Why – Be – Do.  We need to be learners who use the energies of explore, excite, examine, and execute to interact with our world and the people around us.  He says to abandon mission statements – they basically all say the same thing – take them all, scramble them up, pick one and it will look like yours.  Mission statements are boring, uninspiring...

When you look back at the history of books, the story is revolutionary.  Before books and the ability to economically reproduce them, information and human knowledge was not easily shared.  There is a direct correlation between poverty and a lack of books or prosperity and access to books.  Books have had a multi-hundred year exponentially successful run! Enter the “e” book (eBook).  eBooks have some pretty compelling properties that differentiate them from traditional paper-based books.  Note that you will need to ignore copyright constraints for the moment to accept all these properties – I believe the copyright “problem” will solve itself in time.  eBooks don’t weigh anything, they don’t wear out, you can take hundreds or thousands with you on a simple low powered slate or tablet device, and eBooks are (will be) easily shared with others.  They don’t take up shelf space in a bricks and mortar store or library.  You can buy them while sittin...

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...

Over the past couple of years our school district has been working to develop a ‘dream vision’.  We have been fortunate to have a top thought leader, Dr. Andy Hargreaves , working with us to develop an inspiring, inclusive, compelling, learner-centered vision: Learning without Boundaries.  Last week our Design Team met to “clearly define the SD43 dream vision, Learning without Boundaries ”.  This team consisted of students, parents, teachers, principals, managers, superintendents, and trustees. One of the exercises our highly skilled facilitator   Myriam Laberge asked us to do, in advance, was a futurist activity (sure got my attention).  We were asked to (paraphrased): Imagine that it is now 2020. Over the past decade, the Coquitlam School District (SD43) has consistently built on its strong positive foundations to make its inspiring and inclusive dream of “Learning Without Boundaries” come alive through innovative, tangible and effective outcomes. In f...

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...