More on Post-Screen Futures: What's it Look Like?

@monk51295 read my last post on post-screen futures and asks what such a future would 'look' like. While I don't think of myself as much of a science fiction writer, I can offer some suggestions that -- to me at least -- seem practical.

First of all, the existing built environment would have to be retrofitted. We could start with external surfaces. Take your average city block in the downtown of your average city. The exterior of every building as well as the surface beneath your feet would be touch-interface optional and capable of projection and image grabbing. This sort of thing -- making every surface in a room an access point, for example -- is already in the pipeline. Where it gets really exciting is when it goes outside and computing becomes public as opposed to personal. When computing becomes the graffiti of urban life.

However, for those times when public computing is not desired, we'll turn to our personal connection. But iPhones and the like will have gone the way of laserdiscs as they will have been replaced by glasses and satellite-connected contact lenses that offer the wearer a sensory-based personalized augmented reality experience.

What both the built-environment public computing model and the sensory-based personalized augmented reality model have in common is that they are both aspects of post-sedentary computing. They change the nature of how we react to the environment and they would force us to rethink how time works in our day to day lives. In terms of schools, this would of course eliminate much of what a compartmentalized building is useful for; I see those sorts of antiquities being replaced by communally activated information and learning walls housed within smart environments and as open and physical as possible. Get rid of the desks and chairs and let the technology help get people on their feet. I'm envisioning a sort of interactive and communal digital Greek Stoa where the structure itself -- that is, the architecture and the circulation plan -- is the connection device.

Would love to hear all of your thoughts on this. Let's take time out of the present for just a moment to get all 22nd century for a spell.

A Future Outdated?

Reader Mrs. DeRaps reminds us as teachers about our responsibility to our kids:

I hear what Tom is saying and understand that change takes time. As a teacher, though, I wonder what price current students pay when they're under the guidance of teachers who're taking their sweet time in integrating technology into the classroom. Maybe they need those skills in the workplace and/or in post secondary classrooms? Maybe being uncomfortable or taking a risk for the sake of student learning is not too much to ask?

With responsibility comes risks.

Because failure to recognize this is akin to giving our kids outdated educations.

Educations good enough for the world we knew, perhaps. But that world doesn't exist anymore; so this is about taking a good hard look at the world of our kids and comparing it to the world we present in the classroom.

Because whereas we might like to think otherwise, this is about a kid's classroom having no reality-based relationship either to the kid's own life or to the expectations of what the kid will know and be able to deal with upon leaving school.

This is about a teacher, a faculty, an administration, and a school system having the authority to screw over a generation of kids because those constituents didn't feel 'comfortable' online.

These kids aren't entering your world. They are entering their world. And their world is our future.

And what does their world look like?

Here are the top five fastest growing jobs over the last ten years according to the US Government's Bureau of Labor Statistics:

1. Computer Software Engineers (Apps)
2. Computer Support Specialists
3. Computer Software Engineers (Systems)
4. Network and Computer Administrators
5. Network Systems and Data Communications Analysts

Actually, I fibbed. Those five jobs were the ones projected in 2001 by the Bureau of Labor Statistics to be the fastest growing over the decade that would come.

In actuality, the fastest growing jobs over the last ten years -- including the ones forecast -- looked like a laundry list of tech and health industry careers.

The last decade's worth of labor statistics show those two industries with continued potential for sustained growth well into 2016 and beyond. The biggest of these, namely Information Systems and Health Care Support jobs -- fueled (terrible choice of words) by loss of manufacturing and an aging Baby Boomer population -- are the jobs our kids will be competing for.

Now ask yourself: how many kids in your school are getting more than a cursory glance at what's going on in tech and health?

We've got a current financial crisis and a looming health care crisis facing us in the U.S. and we still insist that all high school students take two years of textbook Algebra?

What about Computer-based Statistics as mandatory for graduation? What about merging your math and art departments and offering Network Analysis and App Design as standard classes? Let the kids learn Algebra and Trig through application; let them learn that the Arts ain't all hoity-toity, but in fact contribute to the way we perceive just about everything in the material world. What about combining Social Studies and Health classes? Geography and the History of Medicine? What about creating Literature classes specifically geared towards Math and Science kids in high school just like they offer Quantitative Reasoning courses for English majors in college?

Getting teachers to integrate social tech into their daily regime is just the beginning. We've got curricula that are still trying to catch up to the 1990s.

What concerns me is that in terms of the very structure of how we set up school, we're letting our future get away from us in our insistent and dogged pursuit of getting the past right. Looking backwards, we stumble towards a future outdated.

I'm ok with "I don't know."

What's the future going to look like? How long before this technology becomes obsolete? There are so many social media sites; how do I pick the ones that are right for me?

"I don't know."

That's the answer I usually give when folks ask me those questions. And being someone who works with lots of different groups, I get those questions a lot.

And I just answer: "I don't know."

And I'm thrilled that I'm able to do so.

See, in years past, we tried to answer those questions. We tried to predict the future (remember laserdisc?). We tried to tell how long it would be before things went obsolete (I bought a new cellphone a few months ago that's practically gone). We stressed over what software was right for us and we listened to what the companies told us and we threw our money at them hoping that something would stick.

What we wound up with was a world few of us could have imagined twenty years ago.

Twenty years ago, you would have been considered mad if you had told people that one day they'd have to carry telephones around in their pockets and that those telephones would double as cameras and GPS devices. Twenty years ago, the idea of purchasing all of your books and music online would have seemed insane. Twenty years ago, the idea of free instant communication with no long-distance charges via videophone would have made our mothers laugh out loud until they gagged.

Fact is, we have no idea what the future holds.

So stop worrying about it from the hardware point of view. Unless you are a stockholder, it really doesn't matter whether your PC says 'HP' or 'Dell' on the side. Be willing to mix it up a bit: the 20 inch flatscreen sitting abandoned at the used computer store will work just fine and you'll save yourself a couple hundred bucks. Don't worry about whether your iPod has enough storage (it does); there are actual real things in life to worry about.

Stop worrying about it from a software point of view. Yes, you just wasted money on a set of Microsoft Office licenses. At least now, you know you can get the same stuff for free using Open Office and Google Apps. You'll remember that next time. Don't worry that you are running the older version of Photoshop in your classroom; it'll work just fine and your students will put together the best looking yearbook to date (because the majority of apps they'll use in it's construction and layout are free Web 2.0 tools available online).

Stop worrying about what Web 2.0 tools to use. Will Twitter exist in five years? Will Facebook? The only correct answer is: "Who knows?" We are living in a period of transition from the analog world to the digital world. In the public mind it began with CDs and laserprinters. This Cloud Computing / Social Technology / Paperless thing is just the final push.

Really, we should be asking a different question. Rather than dwell on "what is going to go obsolete?" we should be asking ourselves: "what's gonna stick around?"

That's the real question. And I do have some suggestions there.

The Cloud is going to stick around. One of the things that's changing rapidly is that in our classroom purchasing decisions, we have the opportunity to get beyond local storage issues and instead leverage the Cloud to more effectively use our tech dollars.

Mobile is going to stick around. What form this takes is up for debate, but connected computing on-the-go will for our children be a given.

Most importantly, the concept of immediate global networking is going to stick around. In fact, I'd wager a bet that when the historians look back on this age the one thing they'll say about it is that it marked the beginning of a new form of global communication. And that form of communication has the potential to break down all of the hierarchies that for so long we've presumed cast in bronze. Think I'm out to lunch on this one? Then ask someone who used to work for a newspaper what they think about blogs.

Predictions of the future -- of the particularities of the future -- are always hazy at best. As to what it'll "look like" all I say is "I don't know." As to what tech we'll be using, again: "I don't know." As to what's currently the best for you personally: "I don't know. You've got to experiment and figure that one out on your own."

But as to the basic concepts that will form the future, I say that the Cloud, Mobility, and the Network are the key components. Where exactly that takes technology is anyone's guess. But, in my mind, it's better to keep an eye on the future than it is to worry constantly about the everyday ups-and-downs of the present.

And that's why I'm ok with "I don't know".

Vortices

"Yeats explained that the 'fundamental symbol' of A Vision is 'a double cone or vortex' (also called a gyre) that describes the 'Great Wheel' of history."

from 'Modernism and the ideology of history' by Louise Blakeney Williams (2002)

Thinking about vortices.

I know, I know... I probably just need lunch. But I've been thinking about vortices.

You know a vortex when you see one. They start little and start spinning until they get bigger and bigger and bigger. Then, expanding as far as they will allow themselves, they will begin to contract and get smaller and smaller and smaller.

Then they turn around and do it all again.

I've been thinking about 'em all day.

Sitting in the audience for a NECC session on 21st century tech and literacy with Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach and Will Richardson. Here are some of the phrases that have been floating over the room:

Feedback.

Connecting and Community.

Learning from the Wisdom of the Crowd.

Picking your Mentors.

Exploring Virtual Learning Communities.

Developing Personal Learning Networks.

Merging local community and global community.

And here I am thinking about vortices.

And I'm thinking about this morning's debate over the future of bricks-and-mortar schools.

And I'm thinking about the school building not as a place to be taught, but as a homebase to return to to disseminate what you've learned.

Vortices.

I see the 'school year' of the future:

I see a school year where students will begin their learning experience in a small building filled with a caring local community. They will then plug in and become aware of the world. They will plug into networks and discover the breadth of humanity. They will meet strangers and develop teams and tribes with them. They will then leave the building and go out into the world. They will exist in the world and learn things. They will share those things with their teams and tribes. Their experiences will be shared among strangers and family alike. Their family back home in the local community will learn from their shared experiences and they will synthesize their community foundations with what they've found in the world. They will plug into and come to know themselves. They will return to the small building. And they will share their experience with everyone there.

And they will Grow Big. They will all Grow Big.

That's the vortex I'm talking about. That's the school year I want to see happen. Whether it's going out into a foreign country or into a neighboring community or into a different learning environment.

We're talking about rearranging the set-pieces of what we have too long held essential as the fundamentals of education: the enclosure of the school building and the nature of the school year.

And when I'm talking vorex, I'm not talking silly novelty metaphor. We're not talking novelty. We're talking necessity. We're talking a way of thinking about how we need to engage our students, engage the world, and make something happen in education that reflects the needs of the times we are living in.

Grow small. > Share. > Go big.

Grow big.

Go small. > Share. > Grow small.

Grow big.

Shared growth. A complex, but elegant vortextual/vortextural understanding of the flux between local and distant. A re-purposing of time and place. A breaking through the 'essentialist' mechanic and philosophy that tells us just exactly what THE PROGRAM is and HOW IT'S ALL SUPPOSED TO WORK.

I've been thinking about the change that's coming. I've been thinking about vortices.

Relics of the Past

I am sitting in a hallway on the third floor of the Washington Convention Center. I'm at the 30th annual meeting of the NECC along with a few thousand of my best friends.

The opening salvo -- the orientation presentation -- actually became an SRO affair, adding yet one more acronym to this NECC/ISTE ed tech mélange.

In this long hallway there's an exhibition I took in over a few spare minutes. It's a collection of old computers and techware; everything from a sweet old Apple SE to a how-to guide for managing a Windows NE server to an Atari 400 that my own kids would still just about die for.

The not-to-discreet title of the exhibit is: Relics of the Past.

It's funny because I was thinking of exactly this sort of thing on the way into town today. But not in terms of old hardware.

I was thinking in terms of the relics of an old way of thinking. An old way of going about business. An old way of thinking about and using technology.

It's that old top-down approach. That us vs. them approach.

It's been around from time in memorial, but to some degree, I think we really have bowed to it in recent years in ways not seen since the time of the British Empire. And before that, Rome.

And look where it's gotten us: financial crisis, housing collapse, a completely whacked-out environment, continuous war, and a degradation of the entire concept of what education should be all about.

And folks are sick of it.

So they are taking things into their own hands.

Here in the US, we hired this guy to be president much on this notion that what we desperately needed was CHANGE. Even bankers and car company execs are admitting that we need CHANGE. Not to mention the scientists telling us we need CHANGE to deal with climate CHANGE.

And, though undervalued and crucially underestimated, we've got teachers and students saying we need CHANGE. They're dying to kick the vestiges of the past to the proverbial curb (but more responsibly being willing to stuff 'em into the recycling bin of history).

The old top-down methods of management and the us vs. them philosophy of fear have only helped to lead our public school system -- particularly in the most vital yet vulnerable areas of our country -- into failure. We've got school districts that look like failed states. We've got kids in teachers' classrooms for only a limited amount of time, and yet we watch as teachers are forced to waste weeks of learning time teaching kids how to take bubble tests. We tell kids that they aren't intelligent because they can't regurgitate information.

It's all about failure.

But this time, it's the old system that has failed.

Here in the excitement of NECC -- a conference whose most intrinsic qualities are its exuberance and audacity -- we need to push the final remnants of that way of thinking out the door.

Scratch that.

Don't push it out the door. Just put it in one of those display cases with the other relics of the past.

Classroom of the Future: the Open Architecture Challenge

It will be interesting to see who wins the 2009 Open Architecture Challenge... because this year, the challenge was to design the 'Classroom of the Future'!

Here's a fun video they produced to introduce the competition. Note in the beginning: "The industrial model of school design hasn't changed for hundreds of years, but the theory and practices of teaching have dramatically evolved..."

Hmm. Wonder if there will even be classrooms in the future...

What is the purpose of this blog?

A colleague writes in dissent:

Twitter is not democracy. Your statements about Twitter and Iran and education certainly seem far removed from what you say is the purpose of this blog. I thought this blog was about paperless classrooms. What's Iran got to do with it? What is the purpose of this blog?

I've thought a lot about that question over the last few weeks.

Back in February when I wrote my first post, I never thought it would all pan out like this. I figured I'd have an audience of a handful of colleagues and would post occasional updates about cool things to do in a paperless classroom.

Guess things changed.

In the past two or three weeks I've written about social media in China, the politics of online textbooks in the California budget debate, the legitimacy of Twitter as an educational tool, and now about the need to teach via social media in light of the protests in Tehran. I've had conversations with leaders in the alternative textbook field, argued with the representatives of major corporations, and been invited to report at the NECC convention.

In that same time-period, I managed to give final exams and perform all of the duties of a classroom teacher. And a father of three.

As for what it means in terms of this blog... I don't know.

All I know is that this blog has taken on a life of its own. I don't ever have to wake up in the morning and worry about whether there is going to be something to write about.

There's always something.

And so, I say to you, colleague: you are right. Twitter is not democracy. Twitter is a means of access to information. Information is step one in producing democracy.

You are right: A lot of what I've written here seems out-of-line with the stated purpose of this blog.

But you are also right: This blog is about helping teachers build paperless classrooms.

It's just that my thinking over the last five months and 350 posts and countless conversations both in real life and online has altered for me what this 'paperless classrooms' thing is all about.

Because it's not about saving paper.

It's not about replacing paper with technology.

It's about looking at the world in a new way and actively taking part in it fearlessly, wherever that may lead. And it's not about using or not using a sheet of paper. It's about realizing that we are now living in a world where the dominant human-driven media are divorced from the top-down mode of corporate leadership that earned its keep in the Paper-Heavy World of the 20th Century.

The 20th Century is over.

Now we live in a Post-Paper World. Meaning we live in a world where text and information is dynamic, immediate, and immediately redactable. We live beyond the anomaly of mass-produced printed matter. We live beyond the static version of top-down knowledge as best represented by that dusty set of encyclopedias sitting forlorn in your local library -- miserably wondering what went wrong in the shadow of the computer bays bringing the democratized word of Wikimedia to everyone lining up to receive it.

Whether we like it or not, we live beyond the old modes of knowledge that paper represents.

We are all paperless teachers. And our students need us to be.

So I leave you, colleague, with a question: What is the purpose of this blog?

For the record...

A reader writes:

So I don't get it, are you pro-Google / anti-Google; pro-Twitter / anti-Twitter? I must say that some of your positions on this are confusing to follow.

Being a teacher and not a corporate board member or stakeholder, I could give a darned less about the competition between Google, FB, and Twitter.

Except in how it effects the growth of a free Internet and global access to information.

I've cringed at many of Google's decisions, but think that Google Apps is a great platform. I've cringed at many of FB's decisions, but I think social networking is producing a watershed event in the way societies work and I think perhaps more than anywhere else on the Web, FB may be the source of that watershed (the watershed not being FB itself, but rather the concept of social networking of such a grand scale). I find Twitter to be tricky and cliquey, but I think it's the beginning of a new type of intelligent human network (and talk about potential for 'grand scale').

Most importantly, so long as they exist, and so long as they are useful, and so long as they continue to evolve, I will continue to use, experiment with, and mash up any and all of the resources the Web offers for classroom use and fresh new ways of learning.

Be the disruption. Use technology however you want. The students are the real stakeholders. Change your classroom. Change the world.

[Shape]SHIFT HAPPENS?

Slashdot's got an article on shape-shifting SmartPhones.

How about shape-shifting schooldesks fit with monitors and headphones and wired for the future? I could see it know: "Ok, children... make your desk into whatever shape you want, get in, and let's see where we can take these things!"

It's gonna happen...

A reader writes:

Students constantly ask me if we are going to be in the computer lab. The change I see in the students from Thursday to Friday is huge... I would love to be a paperless classroom. Less to carry home, less to get lost, less for students worry about getting turned in. Plus it's great for the environment. My only question is how do I pull in enough laptops, Palms, iPod Touches to make this work? Grant funding is great but hard to secure. How did you make this happen in your classroom?

You can't do this on your own. Trust me.

But you can't run a school on your own either. The key is to have the full support of your administration. In my school, I was fortunate in that the initial move towards technology was something that the administration was going to do anyway. So under the guidance of our principal we became a one-to-one computing school. The trick for us teachers was what to do next.

That said, it is beyond the shadow of a doubt that one-to-one computing is going to become the standard in education. PDA programs have been going on since the late 90's, and if I had to make one prediction, it would be that PCs are going to become both faster and cheaper in the coming days. And it will not be long before the state and local systems, in some fashion or another, are supplying some sort of handheld or laptop device to all matriculated students. It might sound absolutely crazy now, but it will happen.