Some ten years into the 21^st century, I find it amazing that we are still having conversations on what skills are necessary to succeed in this new century. We’ve explored some ideas of what skills are relevant before (see this, this, this, and this, for example), and there appears to be a general consensus that there are needs for skills development in creativity, innovation, smart use of ICTs, and social leadership. This is exactly in line with what Bernie Trilling and Charles Fadel, co-board members on the Partnership for 21^st Century Skills, identify (lifted from the book jacket):

• Learning and Innovation Skills: Creativity and Innovation, Critical Thinking and Problem Solving, and Communication and Collaboration
• Digital Literacy Skills: Information Literacy, Media Literacy, and ICT Literacy
• Career and Life Skills: Flexibility and Adaptability, initiative and Self-Direction, Social and Cross-Cultural Skills, Productivity and Accountability, Leadership and Responsibility

What makes this book valuable to practitioners, however, is that instead of building up chapters of reasoning for why we need to adopt the P21 skill set in education, they focus more on what each of these skills mean. Moreover, they tie in examples of the skills in practice with an included DVD, containing real-life classroom examples.

While the book excels at understanding each of the P21 skills and their implications, it falls short on how to build these skills in broader contexts – i.e., as a replacement set for NCLB standards. For this, the text could have benefited with an invitation –and mechanism– for its readers to join the conversation on adopting and embracing new skills for the 21^st century. Instead, leading the conversation seems left to us: Where shall we begin?

Note: The publisher provided a copy of the book for review.

Dr. Tapani Ryhanen and a team of around 25 Nokia researchers are currently working on projects such as Nanowire Sensing, Stretchable Electronic Skin and Electrotactile Experience at Nokia’s research center — some pretty far out ideas that could have a lasting impact on the future of mobile phone technology.

[...]

“Right now, circuit boards are solid. The team at Cambridge, however, are working on a technology that’ll enable them to be flexible, creating something akin to ‘electronic skin’” revealed Nokia.

Read the full article at Discovery News.

From the report’s description:

So where does America stand relative to its position of five years ago when the Gathering Storm book was prepared? The unanimous view of the authors is that our nation’s outlook has worsened. The present volume, Rising Above the Gathering Storm, Revisited, explores the tipping point America now faces. Addressing America’s competitiveness challenge will require many years if not decades; however, the requisite federal funding of much of that effort is about to terminate.

Rising Above the Gathering Storm, Revisited provides a snapshot of the work of the government and the private sector in the past five years, analyzing how the original recommendations have or have not been acted upon, what consequences this may have on future competitiveness, and priorities going forward. In addition, readers will find a series of thought- and discussion-provoking factoids–many of them alarming–about the state of science and innovation in America.

From TEDxLaguna:

John Moravec is a faculty member in the Innovation Studies and Master of Liberal Studies graduate programs and coordinator of the Leapfrog Institutes at the University of Minnesota. He is the principal of Education Futures LLC; a co-founder of the Horizon Forum, a roundtable on the future of education at all levels; and he is also the editor of Education Futures.

John is concerned about human capital development as society approaches an increasingly complex and ambiguous future. Technological change drives social change, and its impact is accelerating exponentially. Our schools, universities, and other institutions must leapfrog ahead of this curve for all people to compete in highly globalized, knowledge- and innovation-based societies. His work focuses on exploring this “New Paradigm” and the new approaches to leadership and human capital development required.

“It is manufacturing with a mouse click instead of hammers, nails and, well, workers. Advocates of the technology say that by doing away with manual labor, 3-D printing could revamp the economics of manufacturing and revive American industry as creativity and ingenuity replace labor costs as the main concern around a variety of goods.”

Read the full story at the New York Times.

“Some people think of TV viewing as a solitary experience. But, says Marie-José Montpetit at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who is developing an experimental social TV system called Nextream, ever since the birth of TV we have been talking to each other during broadcasts. And now we’re using online social networks in the same way. ‘The Twitter servers were brought down by the World Cup because people were exchanging views about it,’ she says.”

Read the full article at New Scientist.

“Researchers at UC Berkeley have developed a laser backpack that scans its surroundings and creates instant 3D models.”

View the video at ABC 7′s video archive.

“With that kind of brawny lifting power, SpaceX is proposing developing nuclear fission engines to provide the oomph for getting to Mars in a reasonable amount of time. It would take 15 wimpy chemical powered rockets to equal the turbo-boost from a pair of nuclear-powered Mars departure rockets.”

[...]

“Equally as visionary is SpaceX’s concept of building a fleet of autonomous ‘space tugs’ that would use solar-electric ion thrusters to shuttle 4.5 tons of payload per flight between Mars and Earth in yearlong transfer orbits (OK, it’s not quite FedEx delivery efficiency). The tugs would be serviced at the International Space Station. Upon arrival at Mars they might dock with the Martian moon Phobos, which would make an ideal natural space station and storage depot.”

Read the full story at Discovery News.

Book: Education Nation: Six Leading Edges of Innovation in our Schools
Author: Milton Chen
Publisher: Jossey-Bass Teacher (July, 2010)

Like sunspots, books critical of the education system seem to follow periodic cycles. And, it seems we’ve hit a high point over the past year or so. We’ve seen popular books on the theme emerge from Clayton Christensen, Malcolm Gladwell, Sir Ken Robinson, and others.

Their messages are largely the same.

They converge on a genre that can only be classified as “change manifestos” — texts that are often written by educators (or people on the fringe of education) and suggest that we need a revolution in education. These, nearly universally, fail to tie in research, and lack a real future orientation. As a result, many of these change manifestos fail to help bring about meaningful change.

Milton Chen deviates from the change manifesto genre somewhat by reflecting on his own experiences and the work undertaken by Edutopia, which he previously directed. The book is so deeply oriented toward the work of Edutopia and its key source of income (George Lucas), that, prima facie, it nearly comes across as a swan song of their accomplishments. Reading beyond this, however, the book emerges as another list of indictments of many of the things wrong with the U.S. education system. Where Chen shines, is in making a case for changing our mindsets so that we can find remedies. Specifically, Chen writes that we need to focus on implementing six edges of “innovation”in K-12 learning — not all of which are mutually compatible:

1. The thinking edge: We need to upgrade our thinking about education itself
2. The curriculum edge: Modernizing what is taught, how, and how we assess learning
3. The technology edge: Meaningfully bringing modern technologies into educational environments
4. The time/place edge: Realizing that education occurs all the time, not just during school clock hours
5. The co-teaching edge: Teachers are important, and bringing more experts into the classroom is beneficial
6. The youth edge: Recognizing generational differences between students, educators, and society

These six edges are just fine, but let’s focus a little bit on semantics: I view innovation as the purposive application of imagination and creativity to produce new benefits, but the edges of “innovations” Chen covers are really frameworks for practitioners, policy makers, revolutionaries, et al, to think about making positive change. Moreover, most of these reframings have existed since the time of Dewey, making me wonder why they’re in a book about “innovation.” What Chen does well, however, is connect his six edges with research and stories — most of which was compiled from his arm’s length relationships with Edutopia and other researches in the San Francisco Bay Area. And, he uses these connections to build support for integrating project-based learning, cooperative teaching, proper technology integration, professional development, and other ideas — except they all emerged from the 20th century, not the 21st century. There are tomes of additional research available, nationally and internationally, that Chen could have folded into his book to make for a richer and deeper read — perhaps one relevant for the 21st century. But, this book is really the story of Edutopia.

And that’s just fine. Unless if you’re looking for innovation.

Whereas peaks in sunspot activity can have real consequences for people on Earth, peaks of change manifesto activity have generally lead to no real change. I have enormous respect for the work of Chen and Edutopia, but the casual rehashing of old themes with an “innovation” rebranding leaves the reader asking “how?” and “so what?” Unless if Chen can address these how and so what questions in a second volume or an update, I’m afraid this book will share space on my bookshelf with other change manifestos.

Bottom line: Chen’s Education Nation is an enjoyable read within its genre, but lacks new ideas.

Notes: 1) Thanks to Carmen Tschofen for introducing the term change manifestos to me to describe the genre discussed above. 2) Wiley provided a copy of this book for me to review.

“If students can pass a course by never attending class and watching the lectures online, why should the student be restricted to only those courses available at that university? If it’s online, why not choose from the courses offered at other universities. I also see a lot of the old guard faculty retiring soon. That will help generate fresh thinking.”

[...]

But the knowledge economy changes all that. Yesterday you graduated and you were set for life — just “keeping” up in your chosen field. Today when you graduate you’re set for, say, 15 minutes. If you took a technical course, half of what you learned in the first year may be obsolete by the fourth year.

Read the full story at CBC News.

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