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Digital Schools   Educational Demands of  the New Economy Dr. Scott McLeod December 5, 2006 www.schoolandsociety.org
If… If you could tell one of your college professors one thing with complete impunity, who would you tell and what would you say?
Housekeeping Electronic assignments American Indian project Technology projects being graded tonight after class Reflection #3 due next week School law class next week Including the T-Shirt Game! Tonight’s schedule
The Times They  Are A-Changin’
 
Societal trends Increased diversity Increased technology Aging population Globalization
Increased diversity United States is changing demographically
 
Increased diversity Racial / ethnic status typically has been associated with economic and linguistic disadvantage (as well as disability status)
Increased technology Fax machines E-mail The Internet Videoconferencing These are just the basics!
Fax machines
E-mail
I have sent an e-mail to, or received an e-mail from, someone outside the U.S. Yes No
The Internet
The Internet is an important part of my life. Yes No
If the Internet disappeared tomorrow, I would be upset. Strongly Agree Agree Disagree Strongly Disagree
Videoconferencing
I have done a video  conference over the Internet. Yes No
Increased technology Technology has revolutionized scope and scale of productivity and reach Technology changes rapidly (too rapidly?)
Hang on! This is about our way of life. An historical analog would be the Industrial Revolution, but compressed into 15 years - not played out over a century. Hang  on - this will be quite a ride.   - Joseph S. Kraemer
Globalization Economic and cultural The World is Flat , Thomas Friedman The Flight of the Creative Class , Richard Florida
I have read The World is Flat . Yes No
Aging population Most of the current folks in charge don’t really “get it” when it comes to technology By 2030, there will be twice as many retirees as now but only 18% more workers
Aging population Neither education nor technology is generally high on senior citizens’ list of interests Different views of work, education, and life
Discussion Did You Know? What are some of the demographic and other trends you’re seeing? Do these general trends hold true for your community?
The Rise of the Creative Class
I have read The Rise of the Creative Class Yes No
The Rise of The Creative Class , Richard Florida The creative class People who are paid principally to do creative work for a living This group is growing fast! Service class Working class Agricultural class
 
Creative workers Higher salaries Higher job satisfaction Different beliefs about work
Importance of creativity Daniel Pink,  A Whole New Mind Can someone overseas do it cheaper? Can a computer do it faster? Is what I’m offering in demand in an age of abundance? Relationships, problem-solving, synthesizing
Nurturing creativity The great wonder of our times is not what technological artifacts can do or how quickly they have evolved and grown. The greater wonder is the tremendous outpouring of human creativity that has produced such things. The most fundamental changes are the social structures and mind-sets we are adopting, which feed and sustain this outpouring of creativity. - Richard Florida
Everyone can participate! Human creativity is a virtually limitless resource Creativity is the great leveler
Are schools focusing on  the right things? We desperately need . . . we may not survive without . . . a generation of young people who are imaginative, inventive, fearless learners, and compassionate leaders. Yet, what can we say, as educators, about the students we are producing? We can prove that they can read, do basic math on paper, and they are able to sit for hours filling in bubble sheets.  No generation in history has ever been so thoroughly prepared for the industrial age.   - David Warlick
The Partnership for 21st Century Skills
What lies in the future? The future is unknown, but we can extrapolate from these trends We have a responsibility to our children, our grandchildren, our communities, and our nation to try and be proactive, not reactive, about this The purpose of schools is to prepare students for their futures (not the past)
The work that our students do in  our classrooms on a regular basis  reflects this burgeoning movement  toward autonomy and creativity Strongly Agree Agree Disagree Strongly Disagree
The Not-So-Hidden Revolution
Revolution Web 1.0 v. Web 2.0 Putting the power in the hand of the users Collaboration Creativity Disintermediation Reach
Web 2.0 A quick tour Wikis Blogs  –  me ,  the big guys Podcasts ( audio ,  video ) YouTube  ( online video ) Flickr  (online photo) Delicious  (social bookmarking) Digg Google Maps   mashups MySpace MMORPGs Video game  mods
Web 2.0 Interconnected Collaborative Personalized Autonomous Freewheeling
Movie Digital kids, analog schools
Quote While we teach whatever we teach at school, the kids go home and learn the skills they need to survive and prosper in an interconnected global economy. Incrementally changing our teaching methods, slowly bringing people up to speed . . . worked fine when ideas of literacy and education were not rapidly changing; but they are. We need to be able to leapfrog in our understandings, in our methods, and in our tools, allowing us to move to where the kids are. If we do not become leaders to our students, we will be followers, seen as irrelevant, and left to cry in our books.   - Clarence Fisher
If you took away technology… Primary sector (raw goods) Secondary sector (finished goods) Tertiary sector (service industry) Quaternary sector (intellectual activities)
Breaking apart the center As educators, we are not grasping (or prepared for) the depth of the change that is occurring under our feet. If it's happened (breaking apart the center) in every other industry - movies, music, software, business - what makes us think that our educational structures are immune? And what does it mean to us? What should we be doing now to prepare our institutions? Ourselves? Our learners?   – Will Richardson
Digital natives, immigrants, & refugees http://www.speedofcreativity.org/2006/10/21/beyond-the-digital-native-immigrant-dichotomy/
How would you  categorize yourself? Digital immigrant Digital native Digital refugee Bridge Undecided
Our teachers integrate Web 2.0 technologies into their instruction. Strongly Agree Agree Disagree Strongly Disagree
Our teachers should be integrating Web 2.0 technologies into their instruction. Strongly Agree Agree Disagree Strongly Disagree
Cutting off appendages Our kids are connected. Technology is part of their lives. But. . . . it’s not technology, it’s information. These gadgets are their links to information. These gadgets represent intellectual appendages to our children. They are the hands and feet that carry children to new experiences, and cutting these links is like cutting an appendage - and that makes no constructive sense to these children and their world view.Yet we try to cut it off.  - David Warlick
Lifelong learners One of our problems has been that we have tried to shape the technology around outdated notions of what schooling is about, rather than reshaping our notions to reflect new world conditions. . . . In a rapidly changing world, it becomes much less valuable to be able to memorize the answer, and much more valuable to be able to find and even invent the answers. . . . We can’t keep up with making the technology the curriculum. All we can do is prepare our students to teach themselves. It’s the only way to keep up.   - David Warlick
Avoiding Irrelevance
Irrelevance, part 1 Our intelligence tends to produce technological and social change at a rate faster than our institutions and emotions can cope with. . . . Innovation is cumulative and the rate of change accelerates. We therefore find ourselves continually trying to accommodate new realities within inappropriate existing institutions, and trying to think about those new realities in traditional but sometimes dangerously irrelevant terms.  - Gwynne Dyer
Irrelevance, part 2 The kids who start school today will be retiring in the year 2065, and yet we know as little about what the world will look like then as we do five years from now. We can give them all the content we want, but in this age, in won’t make much difference if we don’t teach them how to learn first. And they do that not by spitting back at us what they “know.” They do it by being creative, by trying and failing, by succeeding and reflecting. A couple of more notches in the school is irrelevant belt.  – Will Richardson
14,383 school districts
95,726 public schools +  29,273 private schools = 125,000 schools
 
Irrelevance, part 3 When the rate of change outside exceeds the rate of change inside,  the end is in sight. - Jack Welch
Irrelevance, part 4 They say, “We can’t handle this much change.” I say, “Your [relevance is] in jeopardy. What choice do you have?” They say I’m extreme. I say I’m a realist. - Seth Godin
We need to somehow  change faster No one jumps a 20 foot chasm in two 10 foot jumps.  – Miguel Guhlin
Irrelevance, part 5 There’s a very affluent school district here on Long Island (NY). It essentially has decided to make minimal investments in technology because it believes the wealthy families that it serves will just take care of that aspect. They basically have ceded ground on this issue to parents and students and have said there’s no place for us in this.   – Jon Becker, Hofstra U.
What schools can’t do
Who’s important?
What we need leadership v.  management
What we need anticipatory v.  reactionary
What we need future-oriented v.  compliance-oriented
Change What does it mean when something changes how it’s always been? - Liz Phair
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