No Class 10: March 11, 2010

TED Time...

Everyone please notice that this post went up on Friday the 12th. That will likely be the most significant element of this week's post, the fact that I released my anal concern for getting my post up the same day as the class would have been. Considering that this weekend the clocks go forward, timing seems to fit.

My TED will be on the 25th. The plan is to discuss learning objects in the math classroom.

Will be back soon with comments about some articles.

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The Articles: Horizon 2010 & 21st Century Skills

The day after Pi Day. 3.14, you know? In this section I'll say a few words about Lana's and Roland's articles.

NOTE: Old Mike has mentioned to me that it was Kaiser that Lana did, not Horizon. I'll post some Kaiser thoughts in the March 18th post, above Thwarted.

First: Horizon 2010. Question: will mobile computing become, as Jan Chipchase of Nokia says, one of the objects in our center of gravity (see Jan's TED). Our center of gravity is defined here to be the place/space where we keep our critical survival gear, what we really need daily and can't forget: keys, money, and... mobile phones! If the mobile phone has gravitated into the survival space, then it is a logical consequence to have rich media course being offered via smartphone, as is being done at Cyber University in Japan. I am not so sold on this yet. It is here, it's now, but doing a course by mobile phone? Why not? Interestingly, all the schools cited in the report are post-secondary. This here/now idea of phones connects to the rest of the technologies/ideas cited in the report because all the information delivered can come via a phone. Read a book, augment reality, analyze virtual data or do gesture computing... all at a mobile phone. I think that if we (teachers) want to keep up, we need to let the kids show us the technology. We just need to be smart enough to ask the the right questions. In many ways, I still live in the poetic world of timing the rotation of the hands at impact so that the struck golf ball will turn in the desired direction. I have yet to see someone use a mobile device to hit the perfect draw or fade. We are supposed to control the technology, and having said that, I'll mention the issue of making absolutely sure that the software which controls cyberspace is controlled. I can only imagine that once the little bots in the Sematic Web become so numerous that everyone can talk to everyone else regardless of platform, there could be one bot whose record gets mysteriously destroyed, but it remains out there doing its thing. That is dangerous. If something were to go wrong, it could impact many users and data, which brings me to the idea of non-authoritative sources creating information repositories. When Denis hosted the MMYA during our class, we talked about what is important in an encyclopedia. Authoritativeness was raised as an important element. If as it says in the Horizon Report that "the role of open content producers has evolved ... away from the idea of authoritative repositories of content and towards the broader notion of content being both free and ubiquitous," then in 100 years, what will be considered true? Who will be the reliable author of the truth if anyone can create it? I think of Homer Simpson here. What about the Guy Maddins of the world (see Ben's post for this week)? By-the-way, e-books are a good thing, but I think Kindles & the like will eventually be swallowed up by iPads and other integrated devices. The big issue for me with those technologies is the display. Getting a display to read as easily as paper is the challenge. The current ones aren't too bad, so there is hope.

Now Roland's: 21st Century Skills. Hmm. Better ramp-up that competitive spirit! That document read a little like a military campaign, perhaps the way the film Japanese Zero will come across. America's fixation on being the best and dominant society in the world is again made clear. Economic prosperity. Sure.

What is said right on p1 about education being the engine of the 21st century economy, is noteworthy. I would argue that has always been the case, though it seemed not 40 - 100 years ago because of the mass amount of manufacturing here (Canada & US). Also, on p10, there is a statement about skills that "will stand the test of time." Perfect! What are they? The document points us to p13 where it lists a lot of student outcomes, and in the list the word literacy appears six times. So, it appears that a needed competency is literacy. Not all literacies, though, stand the test of time. We know that some of the literacies needed for economic success today have changed. For exmaple, an assembly line job of repeatedly putting in one's 12 bolts for 8 hours during the day is not what it once was. Also, if you don't know how to turn on a PC (or Mac), economic opportunities may be limited. No, if America will be the kind of economic competitor it once was, the report shares an urgency that the student outcomes listed on p13 be met. Having said that, consider what is said on p7:

The best employers the world over will be looking for the most competent, most creative, and most innovative people on the face of the earth and will be willing to pay them top dollar for their services. This will be true not just for top professionals and managers, but up and down the length and breadth of the workforce.

There's nothing new here; headhunters have been around for a long time, and so has the brain drain. How many Canadians have flocked south with their cheaply acquired skills during the last 25 years? The thing is, it is not only American companies who will pay the top dollar. So, if Americans ramp-up, then they potentially will become economic exports to foreign firms, just like the Canadians have been to the US (and elsewhere, I know). Also, with education and standards going on-line, the proverbial competitors will have access to all the goals the Americans set. Hence, everyone will have the potential to be as good or better than the Americans. Perhaps, in its own twisted way, the US has seen as an opportunity, through it's global education rating, to exercise its messianic mission on Earth, to emanicipate the whole of humanity through technology while playing underdog. Now isn't that a far-out thought! Hey, then they will have competed well, and won.

The 21st Century Skills document reminded me a little of Winner in the sense of business influence on education. We need it, honestly, as much as business needs the graduates of the schooling system. In light of that, what everyday people need to realize is that it is not a government's job to make sure business hires homegrown talent. Why would anyone who is in business pay a native Canadian kid who barely knows how to spell, $20 an hour when there is an immigrant from India with a master's degree who is willing to work for $12 per hour? The sadness here is that the Canadian kid figures that the $20 per hour is an entitlement. Consider that attitude a product of forward thinking no-fail policies of the last 20 years. And there's to the 21st Century!

By-the way, does anyone know when educational technology really began? Denis said 1658 (see his article The Year Educational Technology Began?). Comenius's first picture book, Denis's first educational technology, contained a defined canon of necessary knowledge. In mathematical terms (think linear algebra), we call that a basis (a minimized set). Each era, even generation, has its own vector space (think time). And the basis of the each era's space (time) are the literacies needed to be able to traverse the space. Literacies can and do change, so there is a different basis for every space. This implies that people need to be able to change, adapt. That seems to be the enduring attitude learners of every era need to have, because being able to recognize change and adapt to one's environment is the basis of success, economic or otherwise.