Shift to the Future

I find it rather surprising how much I did not learn about important aspects of history during my stint in the K12 education system as a student.  Was it taught and I tuned out or is it a challenge of too much history, what do kids need to know?  I’ve listened to two ear opening audio books recently, The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World and Civilization: The West and the Rest both written by Niall Ferguson .  In many ways, these books expound dark truths about our past.  The abuse of peoples, the creation of vast inequities are the story of our past which were essentially driven by greed, power, and fanaticism.  Our past is rife with conquest, enslavement, murder, starvation, etc. and the love of money is clearly at the core.  We continue to strive today against inequities and inequalities but I wonder sometimes if this is a losing battle.  The civilizations and systems we live in and with are still stacked against the many and favo...

Well, we’re back!  What an amazing experience to visit countries with such a rich history, abundance of art and sculpture, phenomenal architecture, and cool culture.  I wrote in advance about our trip in Travel in the Future if you’re interested in what the plan was.  I disconnected myself from blogging and participating in social media, other than Facebook, for a month.  Previously I had blogged every week for 2 1/2 years without skipping a beat and was an avid user of Twitter so it was a bit weird to disconnect but worth it.  So, I thought I’d kick off my return to blogging by sharing a few interesting stories from the trip (picture to the right is in Rothenburg ob der Tauber ). Come along with me for the ride… My wife Shelley and I flew from Vancouver to Heathrow then onto Rome arriving mid-afternoon.  We took a cab to B & B Baghirova in Rome which was located ( Via di Campo Marzio 69 ) about a 5-10 minute walk from the Pantheon and Piazza Navona...

I received an email from a teacher friend yesterday referring to an article in the Vancouver Sun with the title “ Pope: Technology without God is dangerous ”.  In this article the Pope said: “technological progress, in the absence of awareness of God and moral values, posed a threat to the world” My friend asked “ what happens if we have technological progress WITH moral values, BUT in the absence of an awareness of God; how will the world fair then? ”  I think this is a great question.  With full disclosure that I am a believing Christian (not Catholic), I’ll try to answer this question as it fits my blogs purpose to write about about the future and technology.  I should be clear about my understanding of what morality is and where it comes from.  This Wikipedia article sums it up: “Morality (from the Latin moralitas ‘manner, character, proper behavior’) is the differentiation of intentions, decisions, and actions between those that are good (o...

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...

Ten years ago in August 2001 I left Nanaimo School District to join Coquitlam School District as their manager of information services.  I remember the great disconnect between technology and learning that existed.  In our K-5 schools, there was a lot of “baby-sitting” in computer labs.  Students were often playing fun little games but not related to anything curricular.  Technology was used in other schools for specific subjects like business education, computer programming, drafting, etc.  Remember technology was fixed in place so schools had to pre-determine what it might be used for and program schedules and use around that.  Curiously, most of our schools did not even have network drops in classrooms or libraries.  I would say that 10 years ago, most technology in schools was programmed in specific subjects secondary schools, similar in some middle schools, and treated as a completely optional component at the elementary level.  Teachers for ...

A colleague of mine recently forwarded an article in the Vancouver Sun “ Could the Net be killing the planet one web search at a time? ” to which he responded “if there is a shred of accuracy to this article, the internet is an environmental nightmare of unprecedented proportions”.  I think it really depends on how you look at it… Do you ever think about what happens when you type a few words into a Google or Bing search and click the Search button?  I know I don’t.  But a lot happens behind the scenes 24 x 7 to make that amazing service work and quickly.  Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Amazon, IBM, and now Apple have built enormous data centres around the world to deliver an amazing array of online services.  According to the article I referenced, our Internet search example caused 1-10 grams of carbon to be released into the atmosphere which contributes to global warming.  You might think “1-10 grams”, who cares.  But when you add up the billions of ...

It is fascinating to me how people lived and interacted historically.  I’m reading “ The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains ” by Nicholas Carr (Kindle version – quotes refer to Kindle locations) and finding the historical perspective he provides on literacy to be very interesting.  From oral only to writing on rocks, wood, wax, clay, papyrus, and paper.  It’s amazing that people only had brain memory and no recorded memory, for so many generations. Even contracts and laws were simply oral agreements.  Fortunately, symbols were developed to enable the representation of what was spoken in a permanent form.  When people first wrote using an alphabet the words all ran together and were not in a grammatically correct order and all reading was originally out loud.  As the technology for writing changed, so too did the capabilities of authors. “As soon as the introduction of word spaces made writing easier, authors took up pens and began putti...

I can’t recall ever enjoying reading about or studying history when I went to school.  It was, well, boring.  It seems that as I accumulate my own history, I become increasingly interested in who and what has come before my time.  I am fascinated with scenarios both historical and future.  For example, key events in history link up to bring us to where we are but what if things were different, even one link in the chain of events? “Coal gave Britain fuel equivalent to the output of fifteen million extra acres of forest to burn, an area nearly the size of Scotland.  By 1870, the burning of coal in Britain was generating as many calories as would have been expended by 850 million labourers.  It was as if each worker had twenty servants at his beck and call .”, The Rational Optimist, Kindle loc. 3236-43. I read that and think ‘wow, what if coal and its use had not been discovered?’ Coal has become and continues to be a key ingredient for most generatio...

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...