Skills Revolution

Found this interesting article in New York Times by David Brooks called, "The Cognitive Age". Good discussion of globalization and how many politicians are missing the bigger issue. Here is a short juicy quote:

"The central process driving this is not globalization. It’s the skills revolution. We’re moving into a more demanding cognitive age. In order to thrive, people are compelled to become better at absorbing, processing and combining information. This is happening in localized and globalized sectors, and it would be happening even if you tore up every free trade deal ever inked."

[Image: Flickr: "This is my brain": Uploaded on November 23, 2006 by killermonkeys: Creative Commons]

Two Million Minutes

Two Million Minutes is a documentary that follows six students through high school in India, China and the United States. The title refers to the number of minutes a student spends in high school. I've embedded the trailer below. The web site has lots of interesting information on how our educational systems differ. I haven't seen the film yet but am going to try and make it to one of the screenings. It sounds thought provoking.

The executive director of the film, Robert Compton says in one of the related videos that American students say they "can't" do something when they score badly in a subject. Foreign students say they did badly because they didn't "work hard enough." He adds, "They don't set limits on themselves."

[Image captured from video Two Million Minutes: Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZnSG6gg1vs]

Second Language

The Fischbowl recently had a link to this article: Rensselaer to Require All Engineering Students to Study Abroad. It has an interesting discussion about engineers needing a second language because "their eventual careers may require them to collaborate with international clients or co-workers".

I told a teacher I was interested in a science career when I was around 12, he recommend I take German as a second language because so much research was coming out of Germany. Another teacher in high school suggested Russian might be useful to someone going into science for the same reasons. I wonder what language I might recommend to a student today asking me the same question? Chinese? Japanese?

In the late 90's I had a principal who looked into setting up a Chinese language class at the middle school where I was teaching. She was unable to find a teacher who fit our needs at the time so it never came to pass, but she was already thinking ahead of the curve. I know that in a lot of schools, World Languages have taken a back seat to kids trying to meet all their academic requisites. Is it time to re-think our school policies towards a World Language? Should it be an elective or required? Do we need to look beyond the traditional German, French and Spanish?

[Image: Chinese word for luck captured from http://www.chinapage.com/word/chineseword.html]

Shift Happens

I was at a district training last week and the presenter showed Karl Fisch's "Did You Know" as an activity to bring us back on task after lunch. Many of the teachers and staff in the room had not seen it before. I was a little surprised as it seems like I've watched it so many times now. I'm thinking it might be time to show it in my own building to get people thinking.

Several folks asked if I would send them the link for the presentation. Since I went to the trouble to gather the links, thought I'd post them also.

• This is the YouTube link (same as embedded below).
  
• Many districts have blocked YouTube so here is a download page where you can find the presentation in several formats.
• A link to a wiki page that gives more information on the presentation.
• A link to Karl Fisch's blog, The Fischbowl.

This is a great conversation starter for any meeting or class. It will generate all kinds of comments and opinions from the group.


[Image created by Al Gunn]

Human Memory Expansion Card: Google

I was at a concert over the weekend and there was a small group of friends there for a big night on the town. They had two iPhones between them and spent much of the pre-concert wait talking about their phone's capabilities. The opening act came on and the artist did covers of some old blues songs. At the break, I couldn't help but hear the friends discussing the performance. They had been googling information about the singer, the songs and the concert hall during her act. She had mumbled her way through a few verses of one of the songs and they were able to clarify that a line that sounded like "goon town" was really "going down", although I think a song about goon town was more interesting and edgy. They knew what CDs she had released and which had the songs they liked. They also checked to see if they were available on iTunes. The interesting piece to me was that everyone in this group was at least 50 years of age or older. I am used to seeing students and twenty-somethings interacting with technology this way, but not my generation.

Society is changing. The way we interact with the world is changing. Sometimes I feel I am too much of a futurist, too pushy about what I think our schools should be doing to better adapt to this new connected, flattened world. Then I make an observation like the one at the concert and I think I am not speaking out enough. There is real change happening and our educational institutions aren't keeping up. Here is a list of examples I have seen recently of adults using new technologies not including the folks at the concert or any of the many laptop users.

• Man at store shopping and discussing what he needed to buy with his wife over a cell phone
• Two men at a bar googling sports scores on an iPhone to settle an argument
• Setting my phone up to call Google-411 on my old clunky cell phone to find numbers quickly while I am driving.
• Woman texting while she was walking the dog (I see this pretty much every time I walk around our local lake)
• A couple at a restaurant holding hands while they both talk on their cells.
• Watched a woman tape several video segments of a concert with her cell phone. (As I looked around the hall I saw at least five other people doing the same thing.)
  
• Friend of mine gets updates on her young niece's daily antics with short videos sent via her cell phone. She shares baby's first steps with me.
  
• I carry a small, compact digital camera with me most of the time to take snapshots whenever I want. Most of my friends use their cell phones for this but I like the extra clarity I get with my camera. On my walk this morning I took pictures of various street signs for a project I have in mind.
  

Forget the science fiction movie where humans of the future will have mutated into big-brained, smarty-smart people wearing shiny metallic clothing. We will all just get a memory expansion card at Best Buy, hook into Google and presto, it's a smarty-smart world. Oh, and that is pretty much happening today not a 1000 years from today. Minus the shiny metallic jump suit of course.

[Image: Mutant self portrait by Al Gunn]

One Laptop Per Child Making the World a Little Flatter

In a recent post on The Fischbowl, Karl Fisch discussed an experience with the governor of New Mexico. He and other educators were invited to a participate in a conference call on educational issues. Another member, Chris Lehmann, never got to ask the question he prepared. I would like to hear an answer to his question:

"With the One Laptop Per Child mission, we are soon to see millions of students in the developing world use laptops in their learning every day. You want to see American education move into the 21st Century, what would you do to provide American students with the same opportunities for connectedness and collaboration?"

Any of you presidential hopefuls want to offer an idea or two?

[Image: http://laptop.org/OLPC_files/nigeria.jpg]