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Critical Thought about Senseless Contradictions

Posts Tagged ‘Technology’

World’s OS is about Conversation, not Information…

December 18th, 2009

: Image via Wikipedia

If we agree that the morphing networked world is about conversation, then we can picture the changes this way:

Web 1.0 was about stone tablets.
Web 2.0 is about smoke signals; recording our thoughts, ideas, and opinions and reacting to the thoughts, ideas, and opinions of others, whether synchronously or asynchronously.
Web 3.0 is about bridging the space-time gap to engage in live, direct, real-time conversation that is virtually – if not actually – face-to-face.

The new, real-time platform is unique because it will be enhanced by APIs that can mashup our interactions in order to shape new communities hitherto unattainable.

When we understand that technology is innovated to improve social communication, we become less device and application focused and more interactive. Hence, the social media phenomenon is here to stay and will increase in intensity as new mashup applications develop to aid our intrinsic need to share.

The challenge for education is that historically, assessment of knowledge is individually based. This makes perfect sense because it’s difficult to give a degree to someone who doesn’t demonstrate command of some particular knowledge-domain they have studied. However, the real-world of business does not run on individual talents as much as team efforts.

Pedagogical application has responded with case-based, project-oriented, and portfolio-developing lesson plans. But in the end, standardized testing still focuses on individual regurgitation of memorized facts. This is a senseless contradiction at best and reflects a broken system that needs to be redesigned to enter the 21st Century.

Web 2.0 Square (socialmediatoday.com)
Real-Time Web 3 (webwareforall.blogspot.com)
Real-time search (superfeedr.com)
Trackle’s New Trick: Human-Powered Discovery (gigaom.com)

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Posted in Education, Futurism, Internet, pedagogy, Social Media, Technology

Tags: Education Knowledge Management Mass media Standardized test Technology Web 2.0

Future of Business is Social Media driven…

December 17th, 2009

Extreme reputation model means you may not exist virtually!

via fora.tv

Gerd Leonhard makes some great points in three minutes. Mobile driven instant feedback mechanisms may mean your business no longer exists virtually. Are we allowing our customer eco-systems to be fed a balanced diet? Whether you believe in the value of crowd sourced data or not, it can make or break a business.

New models must be adopted that enable the crowd to have more control than is traditionally allowed by old business models. Nevertheless, it’s the open source, creative commons world we are entering. We don’t have a choice. We’re on a collision course. Brace yourselves.

Posted via web from Dallas’s posterous

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Posted in Futurism, Internet, Social Media, Sustainability, Technology

Tags: business future Internet Social Media Technology virtual

Polar Sea Ice Cap and Snow – Cryosphere Today – iPhone friendly puts data in your hands

December 17th, 2009

recent Arctic ice area N. hemispheric ice area N. hemispheric anomaly seasonal sea ice

via arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu

Before jumping on the ice-melt bandwagon, we should arm ourselves with the facts. This university science center website offers visual data, both historic and current.

The adaptation to the iPhone demonstrates how education is being changed by hand-held devices. Just this past week, a school in the U.K. gave iPhones to every student. Imagine trying to argue and debate with ubiquitous access to data in the palm of our hands.

Of course, critical thinking skills are still needed to sort through the vast array of opinion and conjecture and to skillfully help others release their death grip on old ideas without losing face.

Posted via web from Dallas’s posterous

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Posted in Conservationism, Critical Thinking, Education, Environment, environmentalism, Internet, Social Media, Sustainability, Technology

Tags: apps global warming iphone polar ice cap Technology web2.0

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

Forget keyboarding skills in the classroom. Here’s why…

December 8th, 2009

According to KurzweilAI.net reporting on a Mayo Clinic research discovery: Brain waves can be used to type alphanumerical characters on a computer screen by merely focusing on a letter, with near 100 percent accuracy, Mayo Clinic and University of North Florida researchers have found. They used electrocorticography (ECoG), in which electrodes are placed directly on the surface of the brain in patients to record electrical activity produced by the firing of neurons.

Posted via web from Dallas’s posterous

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Posted in Biotechnology, Technology

Tags: brainwaves kurzweil Technology

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

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

Does Technology in Schools Guarantee Effective Learning?

September 28th, 2009

I’m not certain that effective learning would come to a halt merely due to the omission of technology tools in the classroom. However, 21st century skills would be severely lacking and yes, that could affect businesses depending on graduates armed with those skills.

My own experience tells me that the students are learning the technology without the teachers, classrooms and skills. They learn it at home, at their friends’ houses, watching TV and YouTube on someone else’s computer. They learn quickly how to SMS and update a MySpace status page. » More: Does Technology in Schools Guarantee Effective Learning?

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Posted in Education, Technology

Tags: Education pedagogy Technology