Teaching Lions and Gazelles

It has been a year in the making, but I have finally been able to finish the 20th century schools vs. 21st century schools.  This is credited to the xtranormal text to video system.  I don't know how long it will be free, but as long as it is, I'll use it.

 

Yesterday, I took my wife to the doctor.  First, we had to stop at the radiology dept of the hospital to pick up radiology images and take them to the doctor's office across the street.  I noticed that they gave a cd instead of the large film images.  I should have been happy that we didn't have to lug that large film around the hospital, but I began to wonder why we even had to deliver it.  It seems to me that they could have saved themselves and us a good deal of trouble by sending the files directly to the doctor.  It might be an issue related to patient privacy, but the doctor works with the hospital and almost certainly has access to their network.  We had to call them ahead of time to say that we would be picking up the file.  That call would have been recognized as consent.  Wouldn't it be better to copy that file to the doctor's password protected folder rather than buying a lot of cds, burning files on a cd, making patients come in to pick up the cd, and then carry it across the street?  The doctor might have gotten the image before we arrived in his waiting room.  Wouldn't that have been efficient?

 

That is 20^th century innovation.  They kept the same procedures they always have used, except we were moving an electronic file across the street instead of a hard copy.  I don't blame the hospital because they are using 20^th century policies to manage 21^st century information.  We are doing the same thing.  We follow the same procedures and pedagogies that we used in the 19^th and 20^th centuries.  The only difference is that the tools and products are electronic. 

 

It takes 21^st century innovation to improve education with technology.  Why do we get so excited about a $1500 gizmo (interactive whiteboard), then do the same thing that we would have done with a sentence strip and sticky tack?  Every demonstration that I have seen of innovative whiteboard users involves simply using the technology to do the same thing that they would have done with an older tool.  I just can't justify the taxpayer expense to have kids write on an interactive whiteboard the same way they would have written on the chalk board or non-interactive whiteboard.  Perhaps, I am the one looking at this technology through 20^th century eyes.  Is anyone using an interactive whiteboard for more than a high tech flannel board, chalkboard, or copy machine?

 

Another more important question is, how do we help our teachers develop a sense for 21^st century innovation?  How do we develop that in our own thought processes?

I heard a statement that Barack Obama is using that struck a cord with me.  "We are the ones we have been waiting for."  There has been some discussion about the meaning of this statement.  It seems pretty obvious to me.  It means that we are waiting for someone else to do something when we should be doing it. 

 

We spend a great deal of time waiting for someone else to help new teachers, address campus and district policies, or teach certain skills.  The lesson here is that we don't have to wait.  The power is in our hands. 

 

Help a new teacher.  Even if they have a district supported mentor, new teachers need friends that can help lead them.  Just make sure that you aren't offending or contradicting their official mentor.  You also need to make sure that you keep things positive.  Everyone goes through stressful times during a school year and a friend can help a new teacher keep those negative times in perspective.  The power to develop great teachers is in your hands.  Why wait?

 

Get involved in campus and district committees.  I used to hate committee meetings, so I understand your perspective on this, but I have grown to understand something.  Committee meetings are your opportunity to make your opinions known and if you believe something should be done (or done away with), you should consider it your responsibility to participate.  Even if the decision has already been made, your ideas could make a difference.  You should also understand that change doesn't happen overnight.  Your participation over time (even if it seems decision-makers aren't listening) can eventually contribute to a change.  Keep with it, if you really believe what you are saying.  The power to drive campus and even district policy is in your hands.  Why wait?

 

Teach information literacy, technology, collaborative skills, etc.  Those and many other skills are necessary in every discipline.  I know that it is easier if there is a computer teacher that can show the kids office productivity skills, blogs, wikis, Internet search skills, but it isn't as effective.  You are the person that knows your curriculum and you know what the kids need to do to achieve the goals of your class.  You are the best person to design activities for your students, so you are the best person to present these opportunities to them.  There are enough technologically literate people around here that you can find someone to help you if necesssary, but the power to create meaningful interaction with technology is in your hands.  Why wait?

 

There are a lot of ways to say it.  The sports slogan is, "You make your own luck."  That is to say that opportunities that can change the course of a game are abundant.  If you aren't prepared to take advantage of them or even to recognize them, your fate in the game will be affected.  Samuel Beckett wrote a play called Waiting for Godot.  The play opens with a couple of fools waiting for someone named Godot to meet them, twice they are told that Godot would not be able to make it that day, "...but surely the next."  The play ends after two days have passed with Vladimir and Estragon still waiting.  What are we waiting for?  We are waiting for someone, like ourselves, to do something.  Why wait?

When I taught 2nd grade there was a boy that I will never forget.  There were many kids whose antics were lessons that live on in my memory, but this one fits more appropriately because his story is one that I use to pull my story back into focus.  This boy was a typical city boy, he struggled with finishing work more than many others and was challenged to put his best effort into the work he did.  I met with his mother many times to discuss these problems.  She had two primary concerns.

 

1. Education was important and the work that he did needed to be complete and of good quality.
2. His social interests were leading toward gangs and she was very concerned about that.

 

We struggled the whole year.  I can't say that it ever got easier, but he did it.  I can tell you that he never got involved in a gang.  He was killed by someone street racing, the week before Christmas his 3rd grade year.

 

This story is important to me because it set me on a course looking for meaning in what I do.  I spent a great deal of time wondering why I should have tortured him with school work designed to improve his future when his future, in total, was comprised of about 205 days.  My first answer to this quandary was that we can't know if these children will die early or not, but that wasn't enough.  When another former student died suddenly in 7th grade and a friend lost a daughter, one or two years after her daughter graduated from high school.  I began to consider that the time spent in school, even by these lives that ended before they could discover the future we were focused on, was not wasted.  It occurred to me that these children had the opportunity in school to accomplish something.  They knew what it felt like to have goals that required them to struggle beyond their expected limitations, and then succeed in accomplishing those goals.  Perhaps that is just some sort of rationalization, but if it weren't for school, the boy that I told you about wouldn't have felt that success. 

 

That founded a philosophy that still drives me in my job today.  A sense of accomplishment goes beyond just good feelings surrounding the completion of a job.  It is a driving force that moves men over dangerous mountain ranges, across great oceans, through the void of space, and into an uncertain future. 

 

That narrative was only appropriate because this weeks study is over the importance of meaning in our lives and our jobs.  Meaning can be discovered in the most desperate, hopeless situations and in the most comfortable, secure situations, but in all places you must pursue it.

 

When discussing meaning, Pink discusses the difference between a maze and a labyrinth.  A maze is a puzzle with many dead end trails.  It is designed to confuse and disorient those attempting to find a route through.  A labyrinth by contrast is a single path following a pattern from the outside through to the center.  The labyrinth is designed to be easy to follow.  Many organizations use labyrinths to help people meditate.  It seems that, put in left-brain terms, wandering a labyrinth occupies the left side of the brain just enough to release its grasp on the right side.  The right side is then free to seek meaning in the situations that the labyrinth wanderers find themselves.

 

The meaning that I found has evolved a little bit as I have changed jobs, but it is still found in helping people grow and achieve.  I have to be available to teachers and students to do that.  I also have to study and attempt to keep up with current technology and trends.  Read the Techlearning blog for more on that. I have to understand pedagogy and be willing to step into unfamiliar territory.  Now the hard part, I have to work to build relationships; and the really hard part is that I have to find a way to correct inappropriate use or ignorant assumptions within those relationships.  I have to get people to the point that they no longer need me and I have to accept it when they reach that point.  That is all part of the meaning that I have found in my job.

 

Pink spent a good deal of time in chapter 9 exploring the importance of spirituality.  I will spend very little time on it except for this brief observation.  Spirituality, as it pertains to the work place, does seem to bring greater meaning and thus more productivity and innovation.  This comes with a caveat just like the joking did in the chapter about play.  Spirituality in the productive workplace cannot be judgmental or sensitive.  People have to be respectful of others and accept that their beliefs may be different, or perhaps even nonexistent.  They must also accept that other's displays of spirituality are not an attack, but simply a demonstrative act.  The vast majority of the time at least one person in the office will break one of those requirements.  Just one person will turn that opportunity into a poison with the potential to wreck the moral of an entire office.  The only situation that I can imagine that would work is one where an entire staff comes together vicariously with the goal of creating a spiritually-enriching workplace.  With the sensitivity involved in this issue, it would be a very rare situation where this occurred.  But then we can dream, can't we?

 

Without meaning, our job is a maze.  We go about our daily activities trying to avoid traps, and viewing any journey down a dead end path as wasted time.  This occasionally creates more wasted time as we pause at the end of a dead end frustrated and tired of futile exercises.  Meaning changes our job into a labyrinth.  We follow the path toward that goal with the idea that we are learning as we go and everything we encounter is part of the journey.  What meaning brings is a different perspective that can change what is perceived as a barrier into an opportunity.  In the case of my search for meaning, it changed the perception of my job from something that cast a shadow over the few precious days of a young life, to an opportunity to help others experience growth and achievement.  Is your job a maze or a labyrinth?

 

Technorati Tags: Dan Pink, Whole-brain, meaning, right-brain

"Hold it! Stop right there!"  The offending kids stopped and looked innocently toward me.  Their eyes gave away their emotions showing a mix of confusion and guilt.  "You can't do that.  There is no fun in school.  It's simply not allowed."  That was the joke in my classroom.  What you don't know is that the activity was designed to be fun.  The activity before that, involved putting on our pirate hats and eye patches and following a map to hidden treasure. The next activity was comprised of a mob of students assailing me with cries like, "School is fun!" and, "We have fun all the time!" 

 

I didn't understand it then, but I was following the philosophy of Madan Kataria.  In Dan Pink's book A Whole New Mind, Kataria says that laughing people are more creative and productive people.  He adds that people that laugh together can work together.  That is supported by a study by Heidi Beckman, Nathan Regier, and Judy Young that seems to indicate a relationship between "Purposeful, aerobic laughter" on the self efficacy of employees.  I am not sure if I am ready to stand in a circle and chant "Ho-ho, Ha-ha-ha," over and over again for 15 minutes each day, but their research seems to indicate fairly clearly that laughter in the workplace makes everyone perform better their job better.

 

There is a caviat to this.  Jokes and fun can be used to clear the air and they can be a tool for exploring topics that we are nervous about bringing forward.  They can also be devisive.  Fun-loving employees can laugh at themselves and put up with jokes about them, but almost every scenario like this leads to hurt feelings and barriers between employees.  Often, a person that jokes about himself is actually hiding a vulnerability.  Other employee's jokes serve to expose that vulnerability thus making it harder to overcome the barriers and work productively.  The idea that they should be able to take a joke is superficial justification because the object of the joke just hears his weakness repeated over and over again.  Jokes that allow people to blow off steam often just lead to propagation of a myth or to spread someone's weakness.  That creates friction in the workplace.   Laughter is good medicine only when its powers are used for good.

 

Play also involves exploration.  That is one of the areas that I love about my job.  I enjoy the opportunities to explore new technologies.  Try the Invention at Play website.  Spend a little time exploring Second Life.  That is our job.  We explore new technologies and look at the educational possibilities that are there.  That is also something that is lacking in school districts throughout the country and I believe the world.  Teachers don't have those opportunities, or the inclination to play with new technologies.  It is a combination of two problems.  One is that a teacher's time is limited.  Administrators need to give their teachers time to explore new technologies.  On the flip side, I know a lot of teachers that have made the time to explore and have become proficient because they were motivated.  Either way, we will not get technology integrated into the classroom like we want until we get beyond the idea of conducting three to six hour training courses after school.  Technology proficiency comes from "playing" with the technology tools and teachers need time to do it. 

 

In review, play and humor are important factors in the ability of a team to work together productively.  Administrators and employers have a certain responsibility to encourage their employees to play.  That play strengthens the team and stretches the skills of the individuals on the team.  Employees have the responsibility to play and laugh in an appropriate, nondestructive manner.  That sense of play is an important bridge to developing right-brained skills.  I have been on the other side, so focused on "The Test" or the daily grind that nothing else could get in.  Productivity suffers especially in fields where innovation is important, but those were also horrible environments to work in.  The environment was changed simply by key individuals like a teacher who wanted to play.  I can't imagine a sadder vision of a school or office than one where play is really not allowed.

 

Technorati Tags: Dan Pink, play, school, whole-brain, right-brain

Empathy: a common example would be to share the pain of lost dignity or love.  It is to commiserate with someone who is ill or injured.  Empathy is to feel the same feelings. 

 

Empathy as it is applied to our job, means that we have to know how our teachers and students feel when they use technology.  It is easy to list steps to "work around" a problem, but is that really something that we can expect a teacher with 20-30 students to do?  We also see "great" ideas for classrooms, but often those ideas are much more complicated in a classroom setting.  Empathy is the ability to know what a teacher feels when they are trying to complete a project that we made sound so easy.   

 

The issue of empathy is one that is more complicated than Dan Pink expressed.  At what point do you decide that regardless of the difficulty, something has to be done.  I know what teachers feel when they are faced with having to attend training outside of school hours.  Does that change the fact that it has to be done?  If we can't offer training during the school day, and teachers have to get training, then it isn't enough to feel their pain.  Everyone still has to endure it.  Where does empathy come into that situation?  Is empathy rushing through the training so that everyone can go home as early as possible?  Or is empathy taking the entire time allotted to allow for a complete presentation and enough practice time to make sure that the training session is successful?  How does empathy come into play when the teachers are just filling time to get credit for the hours spent, without completing the activities that provide the necessary synthesis to integrate the new skills into their classroom?

 

Perhaps empathy is just something that is developed, like creativity.  It takes a lot of practice and experience to know when we should share someone's pain and when we should move past it.  In the end, empathy is to know what someone else feels.  Then we can consider their feelings when we make a decision that impacts them.

 

This may not be a particularly good post.  Sometimes a topic just raises a lot of questions and all I can think to do is pass them on.  The saying goes, "Don't judge a man until you have walked a mile in his shoes."  Ultimately a judgment or decision may have to be made.  Empathy is an important part of the decision-making process.  How can our technology department promote more empathy for our clientele, the teachers of Magnolia ISD?

Dan Pink says that symphony is the ability to put together the pieces.  The ability to see how different elements relate to each other and then put them together to solve problems is a decidedly whole-brained activity.  It requires a certain amount of left-brained analysis and right-brained synthesis.  Pink discusses three types of people that will have a great deal of opportunity in the Conceptual Age.  The boundary crosser can see relationships between different areas that generally don’t interact.  The inventor can combine elements that don’t seem to be compatible.  The metaphor maker is able to see similar traits in elements that most people see as completely dissimilar. 

 

The section that struck me most was the insight from Drexel and Northwestern University.  They found that the flashes that precede those moments that we refer to as “Aha!” moments involve large amounts of activity Right hemisphere of the brain.  When we use left-brained processes to solve problems The right hemisphere is fairly inactive.  As a trainer, this tells me that when we teach teachers to use technology by giving them step by step directions, the right side of their brain is inactive.  No wonder they have trouble applying the technology skills to classroom situations.  Perhaps we should be teaching them in less structured situations that involve exploration and discovery so that the right side of their brain is involved.  Then we might see more technology integrated into the daily lessons. 

 

It is hard because we think of training as giving step by step directions in a setting that involves a lot of practice, but if Pink is correct we may be doing it all wrong.  How do you think we can change our technology training to promote more right-brained participation?

 

  Technorati Tags: Dan Pink, whole brain, symphony

It said "Thank You."  That was the subject of an e-mail message.  It began by telling me that a former student was about to graduate.  She had applied to a university here and gotten a response that her math scores were just below their standards.  They encouraged her to go ahead and write the essay for admission, because someone could withdraw, leaving a place for her.  She wrote the essay and waited. When the response finally arrived, they didn't decline her admission.  Instead, they announced that her writing was so good that it won her admission.  As if that wasn't enough, (my throat was already choking down the emotion) the mother continued by recalling that she and the other parents were critical of the way I taught writing.  Then she said that she really felt it was my class that established her daughter's writing skills. 

 

That is a story that belongs to every teacher.  We don't always receive them like I did, but I honestly believe that every teacher could read that story knowing that there are similar stories floating in the wake of their efforts.

 

Dan Pink tells of the importance of story in the Conceptual Age.  It is story that takes us beyond the simple recall of names, dates, and events to a deeper understanding that includes context, emotion, and empathy.  Mr. Moses discusses the forces of Asia, Automation, and Abundance as forces that make right-brained skills more important.  He asks what educators do when automation is available in an abundance of products that do what we do?  The answer is to design a service that can't be automated.  One that engages the client through story.  The story of a product reaches your target audience with more power than simple facts.  That power is felt when a story connects the consumer with the producer.  It is not enough to use those when teaching, we also need to teach them and have students exercise those right-brained skill sets.  

 

Story is different than the writing that is taught in school.  In school, we teach components like voice, elaboration, dialog, etc.  We teach that because it is tested.  Those are components of an effective story, but you can't measure a good story with a checklist.  Proper punctuation, spelling, and word usage don't make a good story.  A good story makes a connection.  Proper punctuation, spelling, word usage, voice, metaphors, etc. are important for people to understand the story, but technical accuracy is a left-brained skill.  It is important, but it can be automated and outsourced.  The heart of story is a right-brained skill.  It can't be quantified or measured by a checklist.  I wonder who has the better side of this skill, the kids with their youtube videos and text message shorthand or the English majors with their red pen and punctuation checklists.  Both are missing a key component of the story puzzle, but Dan Pink would seem to stress the importance of the heart that the kids display over the writer's checklist.

 

I disagree with people that assert that some people are just left-brained and other people are just right-brained.  Generally people do have a natural inclination toward one side of the brain or the other, but Dan Pink pointed out earlier that people can create those whole-brain connections.  The viable work candidate doesn't have the luxury of sitting back and "accepting" their strengths and weaknesses.  Whole-brain skills can be developed. 

 

Dan Pink recommends a number of exercises to develop storytelling skills.  One of those is to take a sentence and create a story that begins with that sentence.  I would like to encourage you to do the same thing.  Begin with the sentence "It said ‘Thank You.'"  Go ahead and adapt it to "he" or "she" instead of "it" if you want, but tell the story.  Then post a comment here.  If you tell the story on your blog, create a link to this post so we can enjoy it also.  

 

After that try this one, "My class brings value by..."  Just some food for thought.

 

Technorati Tags: Dan Pink, whole brain, story, thank you  

 

I know that politics can be a volatile topic, but it was in the book, so I couldn't resist.  We have moved beyond the mass production economy of the Industrial Age to the design economy of the Conceptual Age.  Design is more than the aesthetic value of a piece of furniture.  It is the usability of a product.  It is the effectiveness of a product.  Pink devotes a certain amount of time to the aesthetic value of products, which is important as technology and abundance allow us to be more selective with our money.  However, I prefer to focus on the importance of design in making products and services effective. 

 

This applies to us as well as our teachers and students.  We spend a good deal of time designing our professional development to be as effective as possible.  We have to trim the unimportant items from the training session to prevent distraction, confusion, and to maximize our teacher's valuable time.  This includes making determinations about what is valuable and what is "fat".  How important are specific directions when people will forget them if they don't practice over a period of time?  How important is a piece of paper if they will lose it, or if the directions may be corrected and updated?  Does the value of technology rest on learning the tools (like PowerPoint©), acquiring more stuff (like learning software and answer pads), or transforming education (like STEM or PBL)?  All of those considerations are part of designing a training session.

 

Design is the job of creators and innovators.  As I stated in my last post, that is where the actual power of a free market economy resides.  I don't believe that right-brained skills are only born naturally into some of us.  They may come easier to some people than others, but these skills are taught, developed, and exercised.  Our challenge is to continually develop design skills as new technologies become available and then exercise them.  Then we have to get our teachers to do the same.  The idea is that training never stops, no one ever knows everything, and exercising skills after the training session must occur.  This means that we have to design training that motivates teachers to participate, exercise, and then design lessons that will do the same for their students.  That is also the world that our students will grow into.  If a school doesn't teach, develop, and exercise those right-brained activities, their students will have to develop them somewhere else or they will fail.

 

Dan Pink pointed out the CHAD school.  This is a school that teaches the very important STEM classes, but they are taught to a higher standard than the regurgitation of facts that is important to pass "The Test."  They are pushed to design, to use those facts to engineer products and services.  This goes beyond kids that are unwilling to identify themselves as artists.  The same problem exists with kids and science.  As they move up from elementary to secondary, fewer and fewer of them are willing to identify themselves as scientists.  It goes beyond higher attendance numbers at the CHAD school.  It is the very essence of a quality education.

 

Dan Pink ends with the story of the 2000 Florida election.  This story wasn't about one vote in the Supreme Court, which precincts would be recounted and which wouldn't, or even which "chads" counted as votes and which didn't.  The story was that people couldn't understand the ballot booklet.  Pink points out two precincts that had the badly designed booklet that would have given the victory to Al Gore (he wrote speeches for Gore).  I would contend that there is no way to know how that election would have turned out if the ballot book had been designed properly.  Yes, it is the responsibility of a voter to read carefully, it is the responsibility of a voter to ask for a new ballot if there is a mistake, and it is the responsibility of a voter to inspect their ballot before submitting it to make sure that it can be counted according to the rules.  But, it is the responsibility of the designer to make a ballot book that can be interpreted by the young and old alike.  The Florida battle was a failure of the designer. 

 

So this ends in a rhetorical question every teacher and trainer should consider.  Do I design CHAD or chads?

 

Technorati Tags: Dan Pink, whole-brain, right-brain

We are beginning another book study for this semester.  It is Dan Pink's A Whole New Mind.  Dan Pink traces economic development from the Agricultural Age, then the Industrial Age, to the Information Age, and now the Conceptual Age.  This is not really about right-brained people, but whole brained people.  Previously, in the late Industrial Age and the Information Age left-brained rote knowledge was the key to success.  This premise is something that I disagree with.  It was inventive people that ushered in the Industrial Age.  It was Inventive people that ushered in the Information Age.  The way that I see it, the whole-brained, conceptual people were running the show.  The left-brained people worked for them. 

 

The difference is that technology allows the people that run the companies to send more work to people that live in other areas like India and China.  People there need the work and are willing to do it for less money.  That isn't a bad thing.  It helps the company.  It helps the workers that are doing the work.  It helps keep prices down here and allows people over there to afford a higher standard of living.  Yes, we hurt when people lose their jobs, but the solution is not that far away.  In fact our heritage encourages creativity, ingenuity, and inventiveness.  Our education system is also ready to encourage those qualities.  The classes are there and the interest is there.  The focus is on Science and Math, which is good considering the challenges we have to face like finding new sources of energy, drug resistant diseases, and a new breed of enemy, but the left-brained method of teaching them has to change.

 

People will say that standardized testing is in the way.  For some reason "The Test" is keeping us from teaching the way that we all know we need to and all want to.  Unlike others, I don't have a problem with standardized testing.  I have a problem with how we approach it.  The test, whether it is the TAKS or any other test, is not the standard.  It is the minimum.  The standard should be to reach a higher level.  We should expect our students to take their basic skills and knowledge that is tested and use them to create, invent, innovate, and design.  Until our children reach that standard, even if they pass "The Test" we have failed them.  Or maybe I'm just hare-brained.

 

Technorati Tags: Dan Pink, whole-brain, education

I am at the TCEA (Texas Computer Education Association) conference this week.  Just about all of my blogging activity will be on our MISD TCEA Conference blog.  Check it out here for my notes and the other Magnolia ISD attendees notes.  We are trying out some photo tools from Flickr and video tools from youtube so if it looks cool or gnarly, that is why.

This is an addendum to the previous post, but being primarily a result of self analysis, I thought it should be placed in a post of its own. 

 

As I read Chapter 13, I was reminded of a couple of videos that I recently viewed.  The first is a show that the kids watch.  One of the characters decided to teach another a lesson about civic responsibility.  They went to a manatee refuge to view the destruction of man's actions.  While there they were asked to adopt a manatee so that more could be allowed in the overcrowded refuge.  As part of her lesson, she agreed only to receive a manatee a couple of days later.  She had really adopted a manatee.  Her response was, "I thought this was one of those deals where I just sent money and someone else had to do the work."

 

That used to be the way things worked.  Only certain people had the resources to really get involved and do the work.  The rest of us just funded their effort.  The Flat world platform gives us all the resources to make a difference.  Am I willing to do the work that it takes to create change?  It requires research to keep up with current technologies.  It takes time to post ideas in a blog.  It takes vision to interpret educational philosophy and create practical, innovative ways use technology to improve the quality of education in the classrooms.  It takes footwork to follow up professional development with face to face implementation support.  It takes discipline to manage your own professional development.  It takes self-confidence to present yourself in a positive manner (you represent your organization).  It takes passion to promote good ideas.  It takes courage to challenge bad ideas.  It requires risk takers who are willing to fail on the path to success.

 

The other video that came to mind when I read chapter 13 was a performance by Taylor Mali called What Teachers Make.  I am not going to embed the video here because there is some language that I am not comfortable with, but you can do a search in Google or Youtube and find it.  The power line is "I make a (expletive deleted) difference.  What about you?"

 

Are we willing to hold our selves to the same standard?  It means a lot of work, but the reward is attainable.

Chapter 13 is about how the flat world platform allows grass-roots efforts to become global causes.  The Internet, particularly the newest web based technologies, enable local groups to upload their ideas and issues and then connect with other groups with similar interests.  These coalitions have the power to get the attention (and more importantly, the cooperation) of the biggest corporations and governments.  These global communities shine the light on governments and corporations.  Their corporate walls don’t just allow them to ignore the outside world.  Corporate walls hide the activities of opposing organizations, until the activist's shouts bring down the walls and shake the establishment to its core.  These big corporations are learning that they have to change the way they do business.  A corporation has to make their walls transparent to allow the outside world to watch them, and to keep a wary eye on the outside world.    Friedman’s point is that one person can make a difference.  If change is not happening, if the issues that you hold dear aren’t gaining support, it might be because you aren’t participating. 

 

What does this mean for education? A lot of things, but the one that I will focus on is teaching civic responsibility.  I constantly ask myself why technology is important.  The answers that come to mind are using collaborative tools, developing 21st century skills, problem-solving skills, and now I add another, effective participation in civic issues .  We have been teaching kids that when they believe in something then they should get involved.  The Nike© slogan, “Just Do It,” sums up the message of this chapter.  As long as I can remember, teachers have gotten kids involved by collecting pennies, writing letters, sending teddy bears, etc.  Maybe it’s time to get kids involved in a way that really makes a difference.  Pennies are just tokens, empty words to teach the basic precepts of citizenship.  Now student’s voices can contribute to a worthy cause in a global community. 

 

This is not without risks.  Participation in a cause that actually has a chance of making a difference carries the potential for controversy.  A flat world forces educational organizations and their agents to choose between safe but merely symbolic efforts or effective but controversial causes.  I think that one could ask the question, “If we teach kids civic responsibility by getting involved in meaningless actions, what are we really teaching them?” 

 

I don’t know, maybe we should just stay in our shell and send pennies, and letters.  It is a much more comfortable option.

There is a certain amount of concern that the Flat world platform as Friedman calls it would Americanize the world.  The potential for that is present, but the opposite is what has actually happened.  Friedman calls this the globalization of the local.  I would call it global multiculturalism.  The Internet, particularly the latest web 2.0 tools have allowed people to upload their culture. 

 

 

Last week, I had the opportunity to present at a workshop about China.  The presentation was an opportunity, but I found the greatest benefit was the chance to hear the other presentations before and after mine.  I really didn’t have to go to Texas A&M to get this exposure to the culture.  The Chinese culture and many others are being shared on youtube and many other sites.  How does this affect education?  We have so many opportunities to connect our students with other cultures.  It is a great time to be a teacher.  The books that we use to teach world geography and other culturally focused courses are just the beginning.

 

What is our obligation to our students?  Is it our obligation to teach other cultures, share resources that let kids make stronger connections with other cultures, or do we go beyond that and make contributions that allow other people to connect to our culture?  I would say all of the above.  Connecting to another culture is a lower standard that sharing your culture.  Friedman discusses the American culture as McDonalds and Coca Cola.  The American culture isn't Walmart, warmongering, or a corrupt corporate system.  Perhaps we need to begin teaching what is good about our people, art, and culture.  Set the standard above multiculturalism.  Teaching tolerance is important, but teaching inclusiveness should be the standard.  That involves learning about other cultures, sharing our culture, and then mashing them together to create an environment for collaboration and advancement.

These chapters of The World is Flat by Thomas Freedman can, in my opinion, be summed up in the following excerpt from the book. 

 

"...the key factor is actually a country's cultural endowments, particularly the degree to which it has internalized the values of hard work, thrift, honesty, patience, and tenacity, as well as the degree to which it is open to change, new technology, and equality for women."

 

We have briefly discussed the effect of culture on America's continued viability in the global economy.  It bears noting that in the book The Millionaire Next Door by Thomas J. Stanley, Ph.D. and William D. Danko, Ph.D. the same values stated above were the characteristics that describe the wealthy in America.  A major theme that runs through the book is described inside the bookjacket.

 

"It is seldom inheritance or advanced degrees or even intelligence that builds fortunes in this country.  Wealth in America is more often the result of hard work, diligent savings, and living below your means."

 

Back to The World is Flat, Lawrence E Harrison lists religion as one of the most important tools that a culture has to transmit its values from one generation to another.  That reminds me of a story that I heard at a conference today concerning the ability of a religion to grow with it's people's explorations of the world. 

 

The story goes that after the time of Confucius, when the Catholic church was reaching into China to convert them to Christianity, the Franciscans and the Benedictines arrived and had very little success.  Their servant philosophies and dress associated them with the low uneducated classes who saw no reason to change to another low class religion and the higher educated classes just saw them as additional uneducated low class people so they would not listen either.  The Franciscans and Benedictines also could not resolve the high regard the Chinese people had for their leaders.  The Jesuits arrived as higher class well educated people and quickly were integrated into the higher class educated society.    They began to make progress because they were able to present their beliefs in a way that the Chinese people could accept.  Education and knowledge were important to the higher educated class and the lower uneducated class.  The message of the Jesuits relayed that and the value of their rulers.  The point of the story is that while the Jesuits were making progress achieving the Catholic goal to bring Christianity to China, the others on the outside thought the Jesuits were changing their Biblical teachings.  They had the Pope order the Jesuits out of China.  Their culture couldn't adapt to globalization.  It is important to note that the Jesuits hadn't changed the message of the Catholic church or of Christianity.  They simply found the right vehicle for their message, but the Catholic church's inability to adapt to a new culture cost them their mission and created hundreds of years of fierce opposition.

 

If America is to be an economic force, we will have to maintain the same culture that the Millionaire Next Door maintains as well as avoid the mistake the Catholic church made.  Hard work, tenacity, and adaptability are key ingredients for success in a global economy.

In 1962 JFK issued a challenge to put a man on the moon.  Friedman says that we need a challenge now.  He places the following responsibilities on the following groups:

1. Our politicians need to challenge the American people with a measurable goal.

 

2. Congress needs to fund education for 21st century learning and make benefits like medical insurance and retirement portable.

 

3. Businesses need to provide training and retraining opportunities for employees.

 

4. Parents need to promote a healthy work ethic and a stronger focus academic achievement.

 

When I began reading this chapter it seemed that Friedman was trying to put the responsibility on everyone except the worker.  He cares about individuals and feels that American companies will benefit from employees that are more secure.  This is Friedman's plan of action.  I feel that the rest of the book constitutes a better plan of action.  Businesses, politicians, and congress, as a legislative body all have responsibilities, but ultimately the individual is responsible for all of the things Friedman mentioned above, except for the parents.  The previous chapters of his book also seem to support that concept.  People have to take responsibility for their education, finances, and employability.  Parents do have a responsibility for their children's development.  They are constantly battling a culture that promotes irresponsible behavior.  We will be in danger of losing our economic edge as long as academic rigor is valued lower than the phrase, "what happens in ... stays in ..."  Our culture has to return to a focus on personal and charitable responsibility.  If not, we will lose our leadership role in the global economy.

In a time of drastic change it is the learners who inherit the future.  The learned usually find themselves equipped to live in a world that no longer exists.

Eric Hoffer 

 

 What is the difference between the learner and the learned?  The difference is one of action.  Even though it is a noun, the term "learned" implies complacency, so the learning has stopped.  The learner will continue to study and gather information to adjust to changing conditions.  That is the attitude Thomas Friedman discusses in chapter 7.  His points are listed below.

 

1.  Learn how to learn

The learned have stopped learning and are resting on their laurels.  They will lose their advantage like the hare lost to the tortoise.

2.  Navigation

Seek credible, verifiable information from both sides of any issue so that you get the complete story.  Information that is biased or lacks credibility leads to a fall.

3.  CQ + PQ > IQ 

Curiosity and passion will overpower intelligence.  I have seen a lot of talented athletes fail to achieve their goals because their talent was wasted by a poor work ethic.  I have also seen a lot of athletes take less talent to championships because they were willing to work harder than other more talented athletes.  Friedman says curiosity and passion fuel your work ethic.  Whatever it is that fuels your work ethic, use it.  That will be the most important factor to achieve the success that you seek.

4.  Stress Liberal Arts 

The liberal arts education prepares students to make connections that turns math and science knowledge into an innovative "flat world" career. 

5. Right Brain

Right brain minds are able to look at things from a different perspective.  It is the right brain that takes the idea of an ink printer and modifies the concept to lay down solid matter in layers and "print" a 3 dimensional object.  It also takes a right brained mind to take that concept and "print" an organ.  Click here to read that story.

 

Chapter 8 also refers to work ethic.  It relates a low work ethic in America's current culture to a decline in students seeking science and engineering degrees.  The ideas that Friedman discusses are summed up in this quote from Yale doctoral student Eric Stern. 

 "People want to do stuff that is fun, but there is no fun in algebra or memorizing multiplication tables.  But [those fundamentals] eventually become freshman chemistry.  And that is boring too.  You can't say anything good about it.  So it's not until you get to the senior level of advanced classes that you can start to have fun.  But you need to have acquired all these fundamentals beforehand...and getting those fundamentals is not fun...The culture now is geared towards having fun."

 

Later, Stern says that it is the work ethic of the Asian students that impresses him most.  Earlier in the book Friedman quoted Rajesh Rao saying,

"If you are seeing all of this energy coming out of Indians, it's because we have been underdogs and we have that drive to kind of achieve and to get there.  India is going to be a superpower and we are going to rule."

 

If India and China are the tortoise moving steadily toward us, what part does America play in the global economic race?  Chapter 8 is a wake up call to a red, white, and blue hare that has all of the talent and skills necessary to maintain it's position of supremacy, but lies sleeping by the road. 

 

October 4, 1957 America received a similar call when the Soviet Union put the first man made satellite, Sputnik 1 in orbit around the Earth before we did.  5 years later John F Kennedy issued a challenge from Rice University.  Both events set off a huge increase in students pursuing science and engineering degrees and America kept it's position of technological supremacy.  There are over 3.1 million science and engineering graduates in India and 3.6 million in in China, while America has 1.2 million.  The alarm has sounded.  Who will answer the call?

 

Chapter 6 in Thomas Friedman's The World is Flat, tells what he believes are the keys to becoming marketable in the New global economy.  Getting a job and keeping a job has been and will always be about being marketing yourself successfully.  I don't remember who presented that concept to me originally, probably my dad, but many of the concepts mentioned here follow the same philosophy that I was taught.  Nobody owes you a job.  If you want a job, you have to show that you are the best person for it.  If you want to keep your job you have to do it in a way that your employer will have trouble replacing you.  It is all about finding the value add that you bring to the job. 

 

There are three categories of safe jobs.  The first is the highly specialized jobs such as professional athletes, book authors, and researchers that are at the top of their fields, like Michael Jordan or Thomas Friedman.  The second group is people that are "localized."  These jobs may involve specific local knowledge or face to face, personalized contact with clients and others.  The third are the new middle class workers that fall into the following categories. 

 

Great Collaborators and Orchestrators who are able to communicate a global business opportunities to a local market and implement the company's goals.

 

Great Synthesizers who are able to take new discoveries and make products from them.

 

Great Explainers who are able to teach or explain complex ideas in simple terms.

 

Great Leveragers who are able to identify problems and solve them quickly and permanently.

 

Great Adapters who have the deep, versatile knowledge and attitude to be able to adapt to new opportunities quickly when they become available.

 

Green People who will work in research and development of environmentally friendly and/or renewable energies.

 

Passionate Personalizers put a personal touch on mundane jobs that make them marketable.

 

Math Lovers are people that are able to create mathematic algorhythms that organize and manipulate the digital data that people will need to use.

The Great Localizers can translate the global economy into local opportunities.

 

The story of Marcia Loughry illustrates much of these, and I believe personifies the template for success.  She dropped out of college and began working as a word processor.  That job was lost due to technological advances so she moved into mainframe and desktop publishing.  That job was also lost to technological advances.  She began training people to use the software that would allow them to do her former job.  She took a job at the help desk, then began to learn about the network systems that she was taking calls about.  She moved into a job with network management.  Now, she is an enterprise architect with the same company she started doing word processing for.  One statement sums up the attitude that made her successful. 

I concluded that I needed to keep constantly learning because there was always something new coming around the corner.  That's when I understood that I was Marcia, Incorporated.  I concluded that I was solely responsible to [keep learning] by myself, that the resources were available, and that it was just a matter of me taking the initiative.

 

Marcia Loughry mentioned that she also needed some credentials.  She got certified on a specific system, but she still hasn't gotten a college degree.  Statistics all show that those with college degrees have a greater chance of success, but that is not necessarily the determining factor.  Most of the factors in Marcia's success were from the idea that she had to prove her value to the company.  She had to continually improve herself, even to the point of learning completely new skills to keep herself employed.  She understood that no one owed her a job, she had to work continually to sell her value to those that would employ her.  It's the same story for Bill Greer, which Friedman ends the chapter with.  Many of the things mentioned are no different than what people have had to do for a long time to stay employed.  The difference is that in the global economy, there are more people that may be able to perform the same job for less money.  The rapid advances of technology and opening up of new markets just magnify the challenges that have always been there.

 

The keys to success are always going to be as follows:

• Ability to use the tools available (which are changing more rapidly than ever)
• Leverage the value add that you bring to the job
• Communication and people skills
• Higher level thinking skills (problem solving and cooperative skills) 
• Be a life long Learner 
• Hard work and determination 

 

Will there ever be anything else?  Perhaps I left something out, leave a comment to tell me what you think. 

Chapter 5 of The World is Flat is an explanation of the free market forces that created and continue to form this global economy.  The idea is that each country creates goods that they do well and then conduct trade with other countries to bring in the goods that they can produce well.  As that happens, all countries involved benefit.  This is an old economic theory formulated by David Ricardo in around the dawn of the 19th century.  This theory was applied to the trading of goods, but there is a debate concerning whether it still applies to service jobs in the new information age. 

 

You can't ignore the negative consequences of free trade on individuals, but histroy shows that the job market actually grows and overall income levels rise.  Those that disagree with the free tradegenerally put the comfort and sometimes the welfare of the individual ahead of the strength of the economy.  Most prescribe to the idea that there are a finite number of jobs out there, so if we give some away, then our citizens can't work. 

 

Friedman counters with the idea that there may be a finite number of manufacturing jobs, but the level of idea generated jobs is infinite.  Marc Andreeson in an interview with Business Week, when asked what jobs would be available said,

They don't exist yet. This is where people get tripped up. It requires a leap of faith. In 500 years of Western history, there has always been something new. Always always always always always.

History has shown that whenever a new market is integrated into our economy, their standard of living increases, then our standard of living increases.  It happened with Japan and Europe after World War II and it is happening now.  The Business Roundtable says that we have lost about 2 million jobs in the last 20 years, but we have gained 35 million jobs in the last 10 years. 

 

What do we need for that job market?  According to Friedman:

The way to succeed is not by stopping the railroad from connecting you, but by firing up your imagination, by upgrading your skills, and by adopting those practices, rules, policies, and educational institutions that will allow you and your society to claim a healthy piece of the bigger but more complex pie.

 

That means recognize the value and opportunity of new jobs like search engine optimizers.  In a reaction to the fact that China and india are turning out more graduates with Mathematics and Science degrees, the United States is trying to beef up their Science and Mathematics classes.  Granting the need for that reaction, what is the best way to encourage students to look at those courses of study?  Then again the question could be asked, is that the solution?  Many say that Friedman says, "Yes."  Further reading may prove me wrong, but what we have read so far has been more focused on innovation and creativity?  Can the increased focus on Science and math provide that?  

This section of Thomas Friedman's book The World is Flat describes the triple convergences that occurred to power the flattening of the world.  The flatteners converged in three ways to globalize businesses and individuals.  Here is a collection of Bizhub commercials the first is the one Friedman refers to in chapter 3

 

 

I   People and organizations get comfortable with the flattening technologies and start using them.

 

II  Platforms are developed that connect the flattening technologies for efficient workflow.

 

III People around the world are able to plug into the flatteners and platforms to collaborate with others around the world.

 

The dot-com bust, 9/11, and Enron type corporate scandals hid the flattening from the view of many.  Those convergences then power a resorting of the structure of organizations.  Effective businesses became organized horizontally instead of vertically. 

 

All of that seems to bring back the African parable of the lions and the gazelles that I named my blog after.  Consider the words of Rajesh Rao, but don't let the harsh reality of his beginning comments upset you so much that you stop reading.  The lesson is in the whole message.

Instead of complaining about outsourcing, Americans and Western Europeans would be better off thinking about how you can raise your bar and raise yourselves into doing something better.  Americans have consistently led in innovation over the last century.  Americans whining-- we have never seen that before.  People like me have learned a lot from Americans.  We have learned to become a little more aggressive in the way we market ourselves, which is something we would not have done given our typical British background.

...If you are seeing all this energy coming out of Indians, it's because we have been underdogs and we have that drive to kind of achieve and to get there...It's about how you can create a great opportunity for yourself and hold on to that or keep creating new opportunities where you can thrive.  I think today that rule is about efficiency, its about collaboration, and it is about competitiveness and it is about being a player.  It is about staying sharp and being in the game...

 

In other words:

"Every morning in Africa, a gazelle awakens. He has only one thought on his mind: To be able to run faster than the fastest lion. If he cannot, then he will be eaten.

Every morning in Africa a lion awakens. He has only one thought on his mind: To be able to run faster than the slowest gazelle. If he cannot, he will die of hunger.

It doesn't matter whether you are a gazelle or a lion. It is enough to know that with the rising of the sun, you must run. And you must run faster than you did yesterday or you will die.

This is the race of life."

 

Any comments?

What skills will students need to succeed in the 21st Century?  I have done some research and have come to a conclusion that may get me banned from the educational technology community.  I believe that the skills necessary to be successful are the same skills that have been necessary for centuries. 

 

Ability to collaborate.

Ability to recognize opportunities and get past barriers

Ability to analyze tools for value

Ability to innovate with new tools

 

I believe that the focus on tools such as word processing, presentation, blogging, wiki-ing is counter productive.  Those tools weren't prevalent when I began as a trainer and they probably will be taken over by other emergent technology before I leave.  Teachers have a difficult time using new technologies because they haven't focused their thinking on recognizing and innovating with new technologies.  Their thinking skills have been focused on diagnosing student issues.  We do need to teach them to use current technological tools, but how many of those tools will determine whether they are successful later in life.  How many of those tools will be unchanged or even recognizable when they enter the work force?  How many of those tools will continue to exist or even remain recognizable through their career.  What do you think the necessary 21st century skills are?

 

Friedman's last 3 forces that flattened the world are insourcing, in-forming, and what he calls the steroids.  It is interesting that he again chose to use a term that carries a negative connotation to express a positive idea.

 

Insourcing is when a company is incorporated into another company to improve the latter's efficiency.  The example given is that UPS helps smaller companies create supply chains that enable them to compete with Wal-Mart.  That integration can be so deep that the consumer doesn't recognize where the smaller company ends and UPS begins.

 

In-forming is the ability of everyone in the world to access the same information.  Unfortunately, there are some parts of the world that still lack Internet access, but almost everywhere that has Internet access, has access to Google the pivotal force that made this a flattener.  The search engines that catalog the Internet and then direct Internet users to relevant websites flatten the world by providing equal access to the world's knowledge.  As the saying goes,"Knowledge is power."

 

The steroids are the devices that allow people to access the Internet and collaborate from almost anywhere in the world on small personalized devices and even live virtual lives outside of our real one.  These devices are flatteners because, like adrenalin in the human body, they add an extra boost to all of the flatteners that have been listed previously.

 

The interesting thing that I noticed in this section was the specific use of mathematicians by UPS to develop supply-chain algorithms and Google uses many mathematicians to continually develop new algorithms to find and deliver information on the Internet to its customers.  I was interested to see what kind of mathematics these think tanks used.  In the case of package flow technology used by UPS it is algebra.  The search engine algorithms are also algebra.  Although this doesn't sound as complicated as I expected, the calculations are getting increasingly complicated and more and more is added to them to stay ahead of the pack.  How do we prepare students to create algorithms that will improve a companies workflow or improve an Internet search? 

 

I understand that my math training was limited, but it was focused on finding answers to a problem, not creating new equations.  Apparently, I am not alone in this.  Richard M. Felder from North Carolina State University read The World is Flat and Dan Pink's book A Whole New Mind.  His response was to write a paper called A Whole New Mind for a Flat World (PDF).  Click his name to read his interesting article on student centered teaching practices in Science and Mathematics.  His article begins with a powerful interview between an employer and a prospective employee, fictional but realistic.  His point is:

 

"Those are the attributes our students will need to be employable in the coming American engineering job market. The question is, are we helping them to develop those attributes? With isolated exceptions, the answer is no. We still spend most of our time and effort teaching them to 'Derive an equation relating A to B' and 'Calculate Z from specified values of X and Y.' We also offer them one or two lab courses that call on them to apply well-defined procedures to well-designed experiments, and we give them a capstone design course that may require a little creativity but mostly calls for the same calculations that occupy the rest of the curriculum.  Nowhere in most engineering curricula do we provide systematic training in the abilities that most graduates will need to get jobs-the skills to think innovatively and holistically and entrepreneurially, design for aesthetics as well as function, communicate persuasively, bridge cultural gaps, and periodically re-engineer themselves to adjust to changing market conditions."

 

Roger Shanks a former professor of computer science, education, and psychology at Northwestern University, Yale, Stanford, University of Paris VII, and Carnegie Mellon University wrote an article titled Wrong Problem, Wrong Solution that may go too far:

 

On the other hand, being able to reason on the basis of evidence actually is important. Thinking rationally and logically is important. Knowing how to function in a world that includes new technology and all kinds of health issues is important. Knowing how things work and being able to fix them and perhaps design them is important.

Lets get serious. We don't need more math and science. We need more people who can think.

We need to teach job skills, people skills, and reasoning skills. And we need to make education exciting and interesting. We need performance tests not competence tests. If we did all that we would get more Americans interested in math and science because we would get more Americans actually interested in being in school.

 

Mr. Shank tends to promote just teaching life skills such as his article titled In Defense of What Doesn't Work.  I tend to believe that he is frustrated with a school system that seems to be focused entirely on teaching information and isolated skills instead of what I call the science of math.  I can attest to the points that both of these men make.  I learned math through rote memorization.  It wasn't until I began to use math in the daily routines of life, balancing a checkbook, determining gas mileage, etc, that I began to understand how the numbers actually worked in relation to each other.  When II started teaching, I taught math the same way I was taught, but had the opportunity to attend a series of mathematics workshops that taught me the science of Math at a lower level.  This opened my eyes to the problem that I believe we have with mathematics instruction and these men both seem to agree.  Is that the answer to preparing our students for the engineering jobs of the future?  Perhaps there is another issue.  Are Mathematics and Science really the keys to creating students who are employable in the future?

 

Technorati Tags: Friedman, Mathematics, engineering, education

How do we teach?  I have spent much of my 6 years as a technology coach and trainer asking how to teach.  I have asked teachers to start using more student centered approaches like problem-based learning, project-based learning, and inquiry-based learning.  I have asked myself to change the way that I teach to better provide for the educational needs of my students.  My team is reading The World is Flat by Thomas Friedman and every section that we read emphasizes the importance of the question above.  

 

We live in a world where the free market system is not just an American ideal.  The global economy makes our jobs a global commodity.  It is not enough to complain about it or argue that globalization is bad.  It is here.  The great part is that we can raise the standard of living for people in India, China, and other places around the world.  The bad part is that we do that by donating our jobs.  Rather than debate globalization, we have got to prepare our kids for a global job market.  How do we do that?  Perhaps this video from teachertube.com by marrotam has some answers.

 

 

Our graduates will step off the stage into a world that operates by a different set of rules than our schools. 

As we are working on our book study, here are my notes on Flatteners Five through Seven as described in The World is Flat by Thomas Friedman. 

 

Flattener Five is Outsourcing.  Outsourcing is when a company moves a small limited function of its total product or service to another company so that it will be completed and returned at a lower price than it could have been done from within the original company.

 

Flattener Six is Offshoring.  Offshoring is when a company moves the complete production of its products or service to another country to lower total production costs.

 

Flattener Seven is Supply-chaining.  Supply-Chaining is complete process of moving products from the manufacturer, to the retailer, to the buyer, then replacing the lost supply with new products.

 

All three of these flatteners take advantage of current technologies to transfer information and projects to workers which lowers the costs associated with doing business.  It should be noted that Friedman presents all of this from a positive perspective.  I don't believe that he is in denial of the problems these trends have produced, but his message is that the genie is out of the bottle so workers just have to learn how to leverage these tools to protect themselves in a global economy.  When someone in India with technical skills equal to or better than ours needs 20% of our salary to do the same job, how do we protect our income?  What will our workforce look like when people in China are willing to work for a fraction of our wages in more crowded and less desirable conditions than people here?  How will your company compete with a conglomerate that can deliver information to its distribution system and suppliers almost instantly?

 

I believe that the answer is in some phrases that Friedman has shared throughout the book so far.  In the first section he shared an interview with Jaithrith Rao who said "You are defining the future.  America is always on the edge of the next creative wave..."   Friedman said that after the dot-com bust investment firms were only investing in companies, "that were finding the most efficient, high-quality, low-price way to innovate."  He also quotes a story in Business Week from Dec. 6, 2004, "American remains the biggest manufacturer, producing 75% of what it consumes, though that's down from 90% in the mid 90's.  Industries requiring huge R&D budgets and capital investment, such as aerospace, pharmaceuticals, and cars still have strong bases in the U.S..."  When describing the concepts that made Walmart the strongest retail force in the world, Friedman explains what he calls "The coefficient of Flatness."  His explanation goes like this, "The fewer natural resources that your country or company has, the more you will dig inside yourself for innovations in order to survive." 

 

Creative, innovation, research, and development; those are the characteristics that are promoted throughout the book thus far.  If we agree that stressing the math and sciences will be important for our future economic viability, then we must consider how to teach those subjects to students that will make up the future workforce.  The answer to one question just leads to another question.  How do you think we can stress creativity and innovation when we teach science, math, and technology?

 

An Australian review of its education system says the following,

"In an already crowded curriculum, the learning experiences needed to foster in students a capacity and predisposition to be innovative cannot simply be added on. These learning experiences must be integrated within, and become a mainstay of, the curriculum. To that end, existing curriculum, school organisation and pedagogy needs to be re-thought and refined to address the ever-changing learning needs of Australia’s young people.  Teachers’ capacities to adapt and innovate need to be harnessed to make changes within the curriculum, rather than to expand the curriculum."  

Read the rest of their Agenda for Action here (PDF).

 

Considering that systemic change is slow and hard to achieve, how does a classroom teacher achieve these results within our current educational environment? 

 

Technorati Tags: Friedman, flat world, education

This section of the book The World is Flat by Thomas Friedman is about the first four forces that flattened or leveled the playing field for individuals and small companies around the world that wanted to participate in global business practices.

 

#1  The fall of the Berlin Wall opened national barriers, economic barriers, and mental barriers around the world.  Then Bill Gates developed the Windows 3.0 operating system.

#2  The World Wide Web, web browsers, and global communications lines allowed people to access information faster and faster. 

#3  Work flow software allowed people to collaborate with others without having to learn a programming language. 

#4  Communities began to upload projects for anyone around the globe to help develop.

 

I was struck by the open source movement.  The whole story about how IBM began working with an open source web server community because their engineers couldn't create a better product that Apache.  In fact, IBM's best engineers had submissions turned down by these amateur programmers.  Open source sums up the whole spirit of the Internet, and much of this book.  Now individuals have the power to compete with and possibly even outperform the biggest names in their field.  Cooperative learning has been a strong focus in education for a long time.  Businesses have been telling us that they need workers that can work together effectively.  It is interesting that a group of geeks, who have gotten a reputation for poor people skills were showing corporate engineers how to work together.

Blogging, podcasting, wikis, and the rest of what we call web 2.0 are all just different verses of the same tune.  Blogs and wikis are open source news and information.  Podcasting is open source music and video.  They all fit together to make open source information, professional development, and art. 

 

What do you think that we in education should do to respond to these forces and the global changes that they have ushered in?  Do we respond to a world flattened by the elimination of barriers, the development of a worldwide network, workflow software, and open source communities by changi