Leapfrog Institutes

Announcing a Leapfrog-oriented seminar at the University of Oxford:

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Are the old basics of reading, writing, and arithmetic relevant in the 21^st century? Or, is it time for an upgrade?

Arthur Harkins and John Moravec assembled a list of New Basics for education that can help us leapfrog to an education paradigm that is both innovative and relevant for the 21^st century and beyond. These learning outcomes are not intended to be definitive. They are, however, designed to serve as starting points for conversations on how youth-oriented human capital development systems may become more innovative and encourage learning that is more meaningful.

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Dr. Patricia Aceves, St. Cloud State University, forwarded this note:

Greetings Leapfrog Enthusiasts!

Thought you might be interested in this article…

Pockets of Potential: Using Mobile Technologies to Promote Children’s Learning,
by Cooney Center Industry Fellow Carly Shuler, makes the case that our nation’s leaders should not overlook the role mobile technologies can play, if well deployed, in building human capital and in helping to stimulate valuable innovation. As Sesame Street has proven over four decades of remarkable work, exposure to research-tested educational media starting early in life can accelerate children’s skills, while producing enduring economic benefits to society. CONCLUSION: “The kids these days are not digital kids. The digital kids were in the ’90s. The kids today are mobile, and there’s a difference. Digital is the old way of thinking, mobile is the new way.” Source: The Joan Glanz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop
Link: http://joanganzcooneycenter.org/pdf/pockets_of_potential.pdf

From John Moravec:

The Star Tribune’s Karen Youso interviewed me for what I thought would be a short sidebar article on accelerating change, but it wound up taking the full front page of the Variety section in today’s paper. I’m absolutely delighted to see mainstream media discuss the Technological Singularity! … especially since the article contains questions for human capital development and our education systems!

Read the article here.
My favorite part:

“We send kids to school, they move grade by grade, using the 18th-century model, and during that time, the whole world has changed so much. How relevant is that education?” asked Moravec. “We’re training them for jobs that existed 20 years ago, not for those that’ll exist when they finish school.”

Want more? Here are online resources for learning more, gathered by the StarTribune.

This is very much worth checking out. From TED earlier this month:

MIT grad student David Merrill demos Siftables — cookie-sized, computerized tiles you can stack and shuffle in your hands. These future-toys can do math, play music, and talk to their friends, too. Is this the next thing in hands-on learning?

More elsewhere:

• Siftables at MIT
• D. Merrill, J. Kalanithi and P. Maes. Siftables: Towards Sensor Network User Interfaces. In the Proceedings of the First International Conference on Tangible and Embedded Interaction (TEI’07). February 15-17 in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, USA.

Leapfrog Institutes members and friends are invited to join us at the next Horizon Forum meeting!

Inter-district collaborations for innovation

with

Dr. Jon Voss, Intermediate District 287

and

Pamela Schroeder, Minnesota Destination ImagiNation

Monday, February 23

11:15am – 1:30pm

Conference Room 325, Education Sciences Building (University of Minnesota East Bank)

Dr. Jon Voss (Academic Program Supervisor, ISD 287) and Pamela Schroeder (Affiliate Director, Minnesota Destination ImagiNation) will lead a discussion on their experiences in gifted education, DI and other programs in fostering inter-district and state-wide collaborations that breed innovations.

Lunch and validated parking will be provided, but space is limited.  Please RSVP your attendance to the University of Minnesota College of Education and Human Development’s Preparation to Practice Group at ppg@umn.edu or call 612-625-5060.

(This post is reprinted with permission from Education Futures.)

Remember nomads?

In the pre-industrial age, nomads were people that moved with their livelihood (usually animal herding) instead of settling at a single location. Industrialization forced the settlement of many nomadic peoples…

…but, something new is emerging in the 21st century: Knowmads.

A knowmad is what I term a nomadic knowledge worker –that is, a creative, imaginative, and innovative person who can work with almost anybody, anytime, and anywhere. Industrial society is giving way to knowledge and innovation work. Whereas industrialization required people to settle in one place to perform a very specific role or function, the jobs associated with knowledge and information workers have become much less specific in regard to task and place. Moreover, technologies allow for these new paradigm workers to work either at a specific place, virtually, or any blended combination. Knowmads can instantly reconfigure and recontextualize their work environments, and greater mobility is creating new opportunities. Consider this coffee shop in Houston:

The coffee shop has become the workplace of choice for many knowmads. What happens when the investment banker sitting next to the architect have a conversation? What new ideas, products, and services might be created?

The remixing of places and social relationships is also impacting education. Students in knowmad society (or, as I also like to call it, Society 3.0) can learn, work, play, and share in almost any configuration. Remember our videoconference with a fifth grade classroom in Owatonna? The purposive use of technologies allowed standard desks to be removed from the classroom and for students and teachers to instantly reconfigure their social learning environment, allowing for more individualized instruction …and co-instruction among students and their teacher. The differences between students, teachers and colleagues are beginning to blur.

Who are these knowmads in Society 3.0? Workers, students or coffee shop patrons?

(To find out, click on the picture)

Are you a knowmad?

Last month, IBM took out a two-page advertisement in the Wall Street Journal that touted their vision for a smarter planet. They believe:

The world continues to get “smaller” and “flatter.” But we see now that being connected isn’t enough. Fortunately, something else is happening that holds new potential: the planet is becoming smarter.

That is, intelligence is being infused into the way the world literally works—into the systems, processes and infrastructure that enable physical goods to be developed, manufactured, bought and sold. That allow services to be delivered. That facilitate the movement of everything from money and oil to water and electrons. And that help billions of people work and live.

Furthermore, they write that the smarter planet is powered by three drivers:

• The world is becoming instrumented. By 2010, there will be a billion transistors per human, each one costing one ten-millionth of a cent.
• The world is becoming interconnected. With a trillion networked things—cars, roadways, pipelines, appliances, pharmaceuticals and even livestock—the amount of information created by those interactions grows exponentially.
• All things are becoming intelligent. Algorithms and powerful systems can analyze and turn those mountains of data into actual decisions and actions that make the world work better. Smarter.

What does this mean for the futures of our various institutions? For our hopes in quality of life? IBM examines these questions in their blog, Building a Smarter Planet. They don’t provide answers, but they get the conversation going.

With the world becoming increasingly instrumented, interconnected, and intelligent, what new opportunities and challenges are presented to education and human capital development systems?

Cristóbal Cobo forwarded an article from Brand Republic from earlier this year. It contains a few provocative lines from Don Tapscott, co-author of Wikinomics:

Tapscott said: “Teachers are no longer the fountain of knowledge — the internet is. Kids should learn about history but they don’t need to know all the dates.

“It is enough that they know about the Battle of Hastings, without having to memorise that it was in 1066.

They can look that up and position it in history with a click on Google. Memorising facts and figures is a waste of time.”

Absolutely! “Download”/banking style pedagogies are made obsolete by Google and Wikipedia.

In our Leapfrog series, we have argued that education should concentrate on “upload” pedagogies, based on knowledge production by students and collaborating faculty, together with augmentations provided by a new category of community-based volunteers. Using the most advanced forms of information search engines, networks, early artificial intelligence, and the aforementioned volunteers, there is an opportunity to leapfrog education beyond any of the competition. This will require fundamental changes in the mission, structure, and curricula of education at all levels.

Time to drop memorization and refocus education on the liberal skills?