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Archive for the ‘Futurism’ Category

‘We’ll Work for Free,’ Say Retired Professors, but Colleges Struggle With How to Use Them. Really?

December 17th, 2009

This is a good example of how the old business model is so entrenched within the educational institution, that we can’t see for forest for the trees. Experienced, retired professors are willing to teach for free. But we can’t figure out how to make that work. Hmm… perhaps because money interests outweigh education interests? Is that a crowded football stadium I hear roaring??

Where are our priorities? Look what Open University is doing (started by retired professors I remind you). With all our brains, we can’t figure out how to make a new model sustainable? I find that hard to believe. What is easier to believe is that the discomfort faced by the entrenched at the thought of losing their jobs, prevents them for doing their job which is to educate the next generation.

If our forefathers had this attitude when founding our Nation, we wouldn’t have a nation. Self sacrifice for the common and future good took precedence over personal comforts. Who wants to make a difference? really??

Posted via web from Dallas’s posterous

Any student, any subject, anywhere (guardian.co.uk)
Current directions in educational repositories (slideshare.net)
The #Future of #Business: #Innovation and #Sustainability based on what we #love more than what we #measure (greenbananablog.org)

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Posted in Education, Futurism, Government, Internet, Sustainability, Technology

Tags: Add new tag Colleges and Universities Education Educators Open University

Libraries Evolving into Laboratories of Synergistic Learning through “Trends” as Information Commons.

December 17th, 2009

libraries seem to be evolving into laboratories of synergistic learning through “trends” as information commons.

via chronicle.com

I like this definition of libraries in light of how technology is transcending traditional space-time barriers within which they have existed. Technology is stretching the “boxes” outside of which we think; even eliminating the box altogether. Was it ever 2 dimensional anyway? Think outside the cube. Think outside the orb. Transcend the metaverse of space-time. The human spirit – the final frontier?

Posted via web from Dallas’s posterous

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Posted in Education, Futurism, Government, Internet, Media, Technology

Tags: future information overload Knowledge Management libraries Technology trends

Teaching Futurology…

December 12th, 2009

: Image via Wikipedia

The jobs for which our children will be educated do not yet exist. Technological change is emerging faster than we can adapt. The most needed skill is critical thinking. Students need to be challenged to think about their thinking. What makes good thinking and what constitutes poor thinking? Thinking out loud enables groups of learners to hear the reasoning process of others. Higher order thinking is engaged when students extrapolate from given information to consider future possibilities.

For this reason, Future studies (Futurology not to be confused with the artistic Futurism movement) will become an important branch of study in higher education settings. Futurology teaches students how to extrapolate from major trends, what might or could happen in the future. There are many trend researching techniques, many birthed as a result of World War II “what if” scenarios studied by war time analysts.

Today, Futurology techniques for research are used for disaster planning, energy shortage considerations, job market predictions, and the like. The bottom line for those considering becoming a Futurologist? Develop your critical thinking skills. Without quality thinking, futuring will be more dangerous than useful.

Google’s Famously Difficult Job Interview Questions (neatorama.com)
Tough Economic Climate (slideshare.net)
Should schoolchildren be made to listen to a President’s speech and analyze it? (althouse.blogspot.com)

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Posted in Critical Thinking, Education, Futurism, Internet, Technology

Tags: Critical Thinking Education Research Technology

Everything I needed to know wasn’t available in Kindergarten… – The Future of Education

December 12th, 2009

via futureofeducation.com

However, although information may help reduce risk, genuine learning increases capability. Education needs more information as badly as a certain golfer needs endorsements.

Posted via web from Dallas’s posterous

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Posted in Critical Thinking, Education, Futurism, Sustainability, Technology

Tags: Education learning society values

Pentagon: Zombie Pigs First, Then Hibernating Soldiers. Our future with Zombies not far off

December 8th, 2009

Pentagon: Zombie Pigs First, Then Hibernating Soldiers

Click wired.com to read the detailed article. And we wonder what all the fascination is with Zombies in Hollywood?

Posted via web from Dallas’s posterous

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Posted in Biotechnology, Futurism, Government, Health, Technology

Tags: darpa Health Technology zombies

Congressional Mathmatics…

December 8th, 2009

I rec’d this email today…

How many zeros in a billion?

The next time you hear a politician use the
word ‘billion’ in a casual manner, think about
whether you want the ‘politicians’ spending
YOUR tax money.

A billion is a difficult number to comprehend,
but one advertising agency did a good job of
putting that figure into some perspective in
one of it’s releases.

A billion seconds ago it was 1959.
A billion minutes ago, Jesus was born in Bethlehem.
A billion hours ago was the Stone Age.
A billion days ago no-one walked on the earth on two feet.
A billion dollars ago was only 8 hours and 20 minutes, at the rate our government is spending it.

While this thought is still fresh in our mind, let’s take a look at New Orleans. It’s amazing what you can learn with some simple division.

Louisiana Senator, Mary Landrieu (D), is presently asking Congress for
250 BILLION DOLLARS to rebuild New Orleans. Interesting number…
what does it mean?

A. Well… if you are one of the 484,674 residents of New Orleans
(every man, woman, and child)
you each get $516,528.

B. Or… if you have one of the 188,251 homes in
New Orleans , your home gets $1,329,787..

C. Or… if you are a family of four…
your family gets $2,066,012.

Now do the math yourself and figure out how much every man,
woman and child in the U.S. would get if we split among us,
the $800 Billion allocated for the Health-care bill*

*(which requires the formation of 118 new government agencies to manage).

How is your math?

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Posted in Critical Thinking, Futurism, Government, Health, Simple Living, Sustainability

Tags: billion Government health care spending

What are Educational Technologist Leadership Competencies?

December 1st, 2009

The cool possibilities about the more than 200 real-time web 2.0 tools under development (Like Google Wave) is that sync and async are being melded together along with multi-dimensional communication tools such as voice, text, image, video, etc.

When semantic web becomes the standard (searchable text becomes recognizable object) then tagging and bookmarking values will be reduced and personal and group collections will become more useful.

Such collections will not simply consist of some items “saved” to another location, but more likely will consist of “searched” items and “pointed to” results. http://popurls.com is demonstrating the real-time value of aggregating crowd sourced and theme specific topics. Studying such real-time results can be a great source of discussion for critical thinking development.

The most important quality for Ed Tech leaders is to understand trends and adapt their craft to emerging innovations. Higher education may do students a disservice by focusing too much on tool techniques and too little on trend research.

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Posted in Critical Thinking, Education, Futurism, Internet, Media, pedagogy, Social Media, Sustainability, Technology

Tags: Critical Thinking Education future pedagogy Technology web2.0

Community is Not Superficial…

November 5th, 2009

Cooperation is working toward a common goal. Collaboration results in collateral material. However, community may or may not be present and/or result from either cooperative or collaborative efforts.

AND COMMUNITY IS THE GOAL!

Which is why teachers should be careful about assigning cooperative and collaborative work without a clear goal in mind of fostering community.

Community cannot exist without a sense of trust and belonging; a sense that each member’s contribution is valued and necessary; and the belief that what the community produces bears significant impact on MORE than the community itself.

I have pondered this phenomenon a great deal recently due to my position with iMMEDIA and have come up with our Mission statement as follows: Shaping communities of impact through professional development targeting technology integration.

My point is that unless we visionize our student groups with the why; then the “what” and the “how” remain irrelevant and dysfunction results. The assignment may get done but not community resulted and in my opinion, we have done nothing more than drive the herd to market. I find this distasteful to the uttermost.

If there is not impact, members feel like they are given busy work. If the only goal is self enlightenment, members grow tired of the monotony of self centered foci.

If we ask them to cooperate, there must be a bigger reason than the subject matter alone. If we ask them to collaborate, the resulting collateral material should impact a wider audience than the group/class itself. It may work for awhile. But eventually everyone will see through the gloss and look elsewhere to satisfy their innate need to pursue the greater good.

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Posted in Education, Futurism, Internet, pedagogy, Simple Living, Social Media, Sustainability, Technology

Tags: collaboration collateral community cooperation Education pedagogy teaching web2.0

Social Bookmarking’s Ultimate Demise…

October 19th, 2009

Social bookmarking began long ago and some of us who are old enough remember card catalogs. Libraries used this social bookmarking system to standardize a way of classifying books by author, title, or Dewey Decimal System.

Social Bookmarking on the web is a 2.0 platform created to allow groups to classify, store, and retrieve internet resources.

What is lacking is a standardized classification system like Mr. Dewey’s decimals.

Hence, the cons already mentioned.

Another con not mentioned is when the link goes dead. Would be like a library book that gets removed. If the card remains in the catalog, many seekers may be led to a vacant shelf. And similarly with the web-based system.

GOOD NEWS though! The semantic web will cure this ailment of dying links. Rather than tying knots to link pages with bookmarks, Semantic Web will tie a pretty bow which can be removed, updated, and re-tied when necessary (or at least we hope so).

I suspect ‘favoriting’ pages will become more useful so that others can search my tagged favorites which will only contain those favorited items that still exist. Make sense?

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Posted in Futurism, Social Media

Tags: card catalog delicious dewey decimal diigo semantic web social bookmarking web2.0