Education in a Flat World Digital World Right at our Fingertips

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Education in a Flat World Digital World Right
at our Fingertips

• Keith Schroeder
• Library Media Specialist
• Howard Suamico School District
• WEMTA President-elect
• Discovery DEN STAR Educator

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The World Has Changed!
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The World Has Changed

• The world is virtual, digital, and flat
• Access to information that we now possess is
  greater than it has ever been.
• Collaboration with people around the world is no
  longer the exception, but the norm.

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Our Students Are Different

• They were born after
• The Reagan era
• The Persian Gulf War
• The walkman
• Most of them were born after
• The breakup of the Soviet Union
• Tiananmen Square
• Compact Discs had been around for a decade.

• They have never
• Played Pac Man or Pong
• Listened to an 8-track
• Purchased a vinyl album
• Seen a TV with less than 100 channels
• Heard Wheres the Beef?, Id walk a mile for a
  camel, or de plane, de plane.

They Are Smart, Plugged-in, Digital Connected
and very few have any formative recollection of
the 20th century
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Our Students Are Different
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Our Classrooms/Delivery Have Not Changed
Traditional classrooms were hilly, with the
teacher up above, and the learners down below.
We drove curriculum with gravity. But consider
that
From the perspective of their information
landscape, our students are more literate than
their teachers!
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Our Schools Havent Changed

• Were still teaching with a mostly 19th century
  approach to leadership and learning.
• Information is sacred and must be acquired
  through careful study, reading, and discipline.

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The Digital Divide No Longer Refers Only to
Access

• The students have access to more information and
  resources than adults.
• They know more about the world than we do in some
  instances.
• New definition refers to the gap between
  educators and their skills and abilities to use
  digital information and technology.
• The imbalance between students and educators in
  their knowledge of and ability to effectively use
  digital information and technology.

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• Video
• http//www.youtube.com/watch?v_A-ZVCjfWf8
• http//www.teachertube.com/view_video.php?viewkey
  e0b93b5f334ffb4e4064

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What Do We Know about the Workplace of the Future?
This is the information-age workplace of the
future! But
"How Much Information." School of Inormation
Management Systems. 2000. Regents of the
University of California. 13 March, 2001.
lthttp//www.sims.berkeley.edu/how-much-info/summar
y.htmlgt.
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What do We Know about the Workplace of the Future?
If we consider that we carry our phones in our
pockets now
"How Much Information." School of Inormation
Management Systems. 2000. Regents of the
University of California. 13 March, 2001.
lthttp//www.sims.berkeley.edu/how-much-info/summar
y.htmlgt.
http//handouts.davidwarlick.com/
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What do We Know about the Workplace of the Future?
that less than 0.01 of the information we
generate today is ever printed on paper,
"How Much Information." School of Inormation
Management Systems. 2000. Regents of the
University of California. 13 March, 2001.
lthttp//www.sims.berkeley.edu/how-much-info/summar
y.htmlgt.
http//handouts.davidwarlick.com/
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What do We Know about the Workplace of the Future?
That more and more of our professional
collaborations are happening virtually
"How Much Information." School of Inormation
Management Systems. 2000. Regents of the
University of California. 13 March, 2001.
lthttp//www.sims.berkeley.edu/how-much-info/summar
y.htmlgt.
http//handouts.davidwarlick.com/
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What do We Know about the Workplace of the Future?
and that our information technologies are
becoming increasingly personal and pocketed
"How Much Information." School of Inormation
Management Systems. 2000. Regents of the
University of California. 13 March, 2001.
lthttp//www.sims.berkeley.edu/how-much-info/summar
y.htmlgt.
http//handouts.davidwarlick.com/
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What do We Know about the Workplace of the Future?
There wont be much left for the desk -- wont be
much reason to have a desk So what do we have
left? Almost nothing!
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What do We Know about the Workplace of the Future?
And this is exactly what we know about the
future were preparing our children for
Almost Nothing!
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Key Points for Educators

• For the first time in history, our job as
  educators is to prepare students for a future
  that we cannot clearly describe
• The forces that drive the world are flattening
• The flat world has not occurred because of
  competition but because of cooperation
• The measure of how global the world has become
  is how cooperative it has become
• Right brain vs. left brain concept Daniel Pink
• STEM needs to be broadened to STEAM!
• Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Math

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The BIG Question

• How do classrooms, that have traditionally
  assumed their dominance in producing the
  information age workers, adapt to an increasingly
  connected planet, where people can export their
  talent, regardless of the geography? ..and what
  does a flat classroom look like, where learning
  comes less from the gravity of hierarchy and more
  from the construction and maintenance of a well
  oiled learning engine?

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Trend 1 A New Publishing Revolution

• The Internet is becoming a platform for
  unparalleled creativity
• We are creating the new content of the Web.
• Web is no longer one way
• Dont need lots of money to do things
• The new Web, or Web 2.0, is a two-way medium
• Based on contribution, creation and collaboration
• Requires only access to the web and a browser
• Web is even greater place for social or
  collaborative opportunities

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Trend 2 A Tidal Wave of Information

• The publishing revolution will have an impact on
  the sheer volume of content available to us that
  is hard to even comprehend
• The deluge has started with the new Web 2.0 tools
• We must figure out what information to give our
  time and attention to when we are engulfed by it
• It is in the act of our becoming a creator that
  our relationship with content changes, and we
  become more engaged and more capable at the same
  time
• In a world of overwhelming content, we must swim
  with the current or tide (unless youre an
  awesome swimmer or you need to get into a boat!)

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Trend 3 Everything Is Becoming Participatory

• Amazon.com is for me the great example of how
  participation has become integral to an industry,
  and in a delicious irony, the book industry
  itself.
• The reviews, tracking, book suggestions
• Leads me to other books I might otherwise not
  have heard of.
• Imagine an electronic book that allows you to
  comment on a sentence, paragraph, or section of
  the book, and see the comments from other
  readers... to then actually be in an electronic
  dialog with those other readers
• Its here Kindle 2

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Trend 4 The New Pro-sumers.

• Pro-sumer" Producter Consumer
• More and more companies are engaging their
  customers in the creation of the product they
  sell them.
• From avid off-road bikers who created the
  original mountain bikes that now dominate the
  market, to substantial companies eliciting RD
  work from a broader public. (And don't get me
  started on American Idol, which is a fairly
  brilliant way to create a superstar.)
• The nature not just of how knowledge is acquired,
  but how it is produced, is changing.

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Trend 5 The Age of the Collaborator

• We are most definitely in a new age, and it
  matters.
• If many of us had been born 150 years ago, we
  might have been taken out into the wilderness and
  left to die
• The era of trusted authority (Time magazine, for
  instance, when I was young) is giving way to an
  era of transparent and collaborative scholarship
  (Wikipedia)
• The expert is giving way to the collaborator,
  since 1 1 truly equals 3 in this realm.

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Trend 6 An Explosion of Innovation

• Innovation results from the application of
  knowledge from one field to another
• Now, imagine all of us as creators, bringing our
  own particular experiences and insight to
  increasingly diverse and specific areas of
  knowledge
• The combination of
• An increased ability to work on specialized
  topics by gathering teams from around the globe
• The diversity of those collaborators, should
  bring with it an incredible amount of innovation.

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Trend 7 The World Gets Even Flatter and Faster.

• Yes, and even if that "flat" world is "spiky" or
  "wrinkled," it's still getting pretty darn flat
• That anyone, anywhere in the world, can study
  using over the material from over 1800 open
  courses at MIT is astounding, and it's only the
  start
• We all benefit from this flatter and faster world
• This is key to our ability and impetus for global
  literacy
• Knowledge Creativity Competitive Edge

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Trend 8 Social Learning Moves Center Stage.

• The distinction between the "lecture" hall and
  the "hallway" is diminishing--since it's in the
  hallway discussions after the lecture where
  learning actually takes place.
• One of the strongest determinants of success in
  higher education is the ability to form or
  participate in study groups
• Time to move from thinking of knowledge as a
  "substance" that we transfer from teacher to
  student, to a social view of learning.
• Not "I think, therefore I am," but "We
  participate, therefore we are
• From "access to information" to "access to
  people"
• From "learning about" to "learning to be."

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Trend 9 The Long Tail

• When Amazon.com sells more items that aren't
  carried in retail stores than are, it's pretty
  apparent that an era of specialized production is
  made possible by the Internet
• The technologies of the Web make "differentiated
  instruction" a reality that both parents and
  students will demand.
• I can go online and watch heart-surgery take
  place live. I can find a tutor in almost any
  subject who can work with me via video-conference
  and shared desktop.
• If a student cares about something--if they have
  a passion for something--they can learn about it
  and they can actually produce work in the field
  and become a contributing part of that community.

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Trend 10 Social Networking Really (Opens Up the
Party.

• Web 2.0 was amazing when blogs and wikis led the
  way
• But the party really began when sites that
  combined several Web 2.0 tools together created
  the phenomenon of "social networking"
• If MySpace were a country, it would be the third
  most populous in the world
• WhatNing is doing by allowing users to create
  their own social networks is amazing
• The potential for education is astounding

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Shifts in Thinking

• From consuming to producing
• From authority to transparency
• From the expert to the facilitator
• From the lecture to the hallway
• From "access to information" to "access to
  people
• From "learning about" to "learning to be
• From passive to passionate learning
• From presentation to participation
• From publication to conversation
• From formal schooling to lifelong learning
• From supply-push to demand-pull
• Web 2.0 is the future of education

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Help Build the New Playbook.

• You may think that you don't have anything to
  teach the generation of students who seem so
  tech-savvy, but they really, really need you
• For centuries we have had to teach students how
  to seek out information now we have to teach
  them how to sort from an overabundance of
  information
• We've spent the last ten years teaching students
  how to protect themselves from inappropriate
  content now we have to teach them to create
  appropriate content.
• They may be "digital natives," but their
  knowledge is surface level
• They desperately need training in real thinking
  skills.
• More than any other generation, they live lives
  that are largely separated from the adults around
  them

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The World Has Changed!