Thinking Back Over the Last Few Weeks

I can hardly believe that the last few weeks have passed so quickly, I could easily continue learning and reading about technology and leadership for another eight weeks.  One concept from the previous weeks that has stayed with me is the replacement of routine jobs with automation and a return to more creative endeavors.  While many people may be concerned about this shift, I am looking forward to the removal of mundane parts of my job that can be automated.  However, I am not sure that the education field is as ready for that shift as it should be.  As I look around the classrooms in our building and think about how many of the assignments encourage true creativity, I wonder if we are preparing our students appropriately.  

A colleague and I facilitate a project-based learning class with 31 students that we call our leadership group (They have named themselves Wilbur Workshop).  Currently, most of us are in the library computer lab working on about seven completely different projects, because the students pick the activities and do all the work.  They think up new things to do or learn in committees or groups, and get approval from us, or our principal if necessary.  One group is creating/designing Christmas Cards to give to the staff; another is creating a video for the school website of the Cocoa at The Curb activity they completed earlier this week.  One group is putting together an online poll for the students to vote on their favorite school lunch; another group is setting up an elf on the shelfie-selfie drive next week for students to submit pictures of themselves with the elf photos hidden around the building.  Because of the nature of the last two projects, the students had to make an appointment with the principal, propose their activity, and get approval, all of which happens without our help.  When we undertook this class at the beginning of the school year, it was just about a way to help students to take more initiative around the building and help promote leadership skills.  Thinking about how automation will limit rudimentary jobs and allow for creation of jobs that require more creativity, it seems this experiment might help to model what creativity and career skills might be like in the future.  It is a rather small pond example, and we are not held to specific curriculum, but any teacher can allow for more creativity in performance assessment with a little planning.  More importantly, allowing students to interact with other people and ideas on the web helps them to become literate members of the digital universe and not only consume information, but contribute as well.  

As a leader, it is important to allow for new ideas and advancements to improve your situation whether it is professional, production, morale, or personal improvements.  While many technological improvements can be made, it is important to also be open to any idea that presents itself.  Often the good that technology can bring to our organization is not the technology itself, but the opportunity for new knowledge, collaborations, and an influx of fresh ideas from outside our organization and sometimes even outside our specific field.  

The graphic included in Martin’s blog serves as a self-check of your own personal readiness for the ways work has changed. As I evaluated myself looking at the needed skills, I was happy to see that I am somewhat ready for the challenges in workplace, but there are still some areas that I need to focus my goals for personal growth. As most  of us chose an online learning environment for our doctorate for a reason, I would assume that many of us are constant and self-directed learners. To be able to complete our literature reviews we all need to be able to search well, decide on the quality of our sources, and communicate how the previous research all fits together. One area that I want to look deeper into is using networks for public problem solving. I have to admit that I often do not seek outside of my immediate network for solutions, and hence am not allowing access to many possible alternate solutions. For personal research and project solutions I usually seek outside my regular sphere, but looking back, I have not been as widespread in my professional solution seeking. While I have a rather diverse professional network, I have not always made the best use of it and rarely went beyond the known network.  As a classroom teacher I was always exploring and seeking new sources, but it seems my time has become more limited and the time it takes to seek out, vet, and develop new connections was no longer such a priority.

As leaders we must always seek to expand our knowledge base and adapt to new ways of thinking, collaborating, and working if we are to thrive.  Michelle Martin’s concept of social artists rather than leaders is an interesting turn of phrase and it emphasizes the creative nature of the future workplace.  I for one am excited about the changing nature of work and look forward to the next twenty years as an evolving leader.  

Can We Fix It?  Yes We Can! - Educational & Technological Revolution

The Corning Glass videos reminded me of the unbelievability of the 1987 Macintosh commercial that predicts an iPad, with voice recognition assistant.  While there are those who think that the reality of totally interlinked computer glass and invisible wearable computer sensor inputs and outputs is something far into the future, you only have to go back to 1983, just over thirty years into the past to see how fast things are changing.  In 1983, it had been ten years since a cellular phone was invented, and the FCC would finally approve them for consumer use in September of that year, and three months earlier, in June, Steve Jobs gave a speech at a conference about the future of computing, that was spot on for the next thirty years.  At one point he asks if anyone owns any type of personal computer and you can tell by the laughing response it is a couple or none, because he then asks who has used one or seen one.  This was a speech given just over thirty years ago and he mentions several technologies that we now use every day, the iPad (computer in a book), computers in every home (which sounded insane because practically no one, even at a future tech conference owned one), Google street view, Siri, mobile computing, and the App store.  It is an hour-long recording, but would be interesting listening during all the holiday driving to come.   

Quite frankly, the Corning Glass commercial almost seems more believable in comparison.  Some of the glass technologies in the video already exist, they are just not fully automated and networked, some are not yet commercially available or affordable.  And somehow, we must educate the generation that will make them a reality with a student to computer ratio of eight to one, large portions of the internet filtered out, and flat textbooks written in 2010.  The coming change for education seems almost insurmountable with the current system and might conceivably take a dramatic failure to finally make the changes necessary to stay relevant and meet the education needs of the future. 

If you are from the Midwest, you might know that Joplin, MO schools were completely wiped out in 2011, they lost buildings and materials and basically had to start from scratch.  Wisely, the school board and district leaders took the time to re-imagine what education looks like and three years later after surviving in temporary housings, finally opened the Franklin Technology Center Complex and the high school.  I heard the superintendent speak at a technology conference about the changes and planning for a totally different future during that reconstruction time and it while it was a hard transition, it seemed like Joplin might be the place for forward thinking educators to flex their know-how and really push the envelope of education.  I would be curious to take a peek now and see if their trajectory has taken them forward, or stalled in the bindings of the past. 

When technology and changing education are discussed, it is often about one-to-one tech programs, flexible scheduling, online schooling, and flipped classrooms.  While each of these things are elements of technology, they are all still rooted in a traditional construct of get the information, practice the information.  If the challenges presented to students do not focus more on creative problem solving without restrictions and collaboration and with other students, teachers, professionals, and community contributors, the creativity needed to bring the advancements of our possible future to fruition may indeed be the stuff of dreams.  The next Steve Jobs, is not sitting somewhere in a cubicle working in obscurity, she or he is sitting in a classroom somewhere trying to solve the problems of the world armed only with a piece of notebook paper, posting content online under the table typing with his thumbs.  So before you take the phone away, ask yourself, what can he teach me?  Where can that technology be used to enhance learning rather than distract?  Am I relevant to the jobs and problems these students will encounter when they graduate?  You have all probably heard that we are preparing students for jobs that do not yet exist, but teachers have been doing this for years.  You do not have to know the job they will have to give them the best possible chance at success, we prepare engineers every day for their career, and most teachers could not design a plane or satellite.  Not knowing exactly what their job will be should not hold us back from giving them the communication, collaboration, and creativity needed to meet any challenge, or serve as an excuse to not be relevant.

I am excited for the changes that will come in my long lifetime, I can hardly fathom the things I will one day learn from my grandchildren, should I ever have any.  Staying current with technology is not easy, but it does get easier.  The more flexible you become, the more technology you adopt, the easier the next step becomes.  It is why our youth today are so adaptable, in their short lives technology has changed dramatically and they are more comfortable with the constant “upgrades” than those from a time of slower change.  They are not afraid of the technological differences, they embrace them and bring them to each other to share. Weinberger tells us as leaders we must approach these differences openly.  The speed of technology and generation changes is increasing exponentially, so if leaders are not willing to put in the time to learn new things and stay on top of the changing landscape, they will quickly find themselves replaced by those who are willing to always adapt.  Being a lifetime learner is an important quality in a leader and whether that learning is from others, from institutions, or from your own explorations, you must always seek out new worlds and new civilizations and boldly go …