Citations, Research and Notes:
Technology as an Environment/Ecosystems
Our mindset needs to change when we think about the context and conditions surrounding the technologies in our hands everyday.
Water/Air are good metaphors because they to are used as tools too. Climate for example is ever changing and we must adapt daily. See the impacts of climate over time here:
http://humanorigins.si.edu/evidence/human-evolution-timeline-interactive
Just how engrained is this “new” environment, or is this new at all? Maybe we are the victims of Moore’s Law. Let’s look at speech.
The emergence of speech, the objects that hands had been manipulating became nouns with relationships. "Grammar is spatial" (Wilson, 2008^), and space is also sequential:
Human Evolution as a Consideration:
School curriculum will need to evolve beyond it's "Sabertooth Curriculum”
Jamie Casap, Google's Education Evangelist
"As the world gets more connected, it also gets more complex. We now operate on a global scale and our job in education is to help learners develop the knowledge, skills, and abilities they will need to thrive in this new environment. We are preparing them to solve global problems we haven’t defined yet, using technology that hasn’t been invented, in roles that do not exist. To thrive in this new era, learners need to know how to learn, engage, create, collaborate, communicate, and to think critically. We need to continually iterate education in pursuit of making it a powerful, effective, and engaging learning experience. Educators around the world are beginning to implement some promising approaches and models as they iterate education. Technology is enabling and supporting these iterations, and our job in technology is to make it easy to use, simple to manage, and effortlessly scalable."
Technology as an Environment/Ecosystems
Our mindset needs to change when we think about the context and conditions surrounding the technologies in our hands everyday.
Water/Air are good metaphors because they to are used as tools too. Climate for example is ever changing and we must adapt daily. See the impacts of climate over time here:
http://humanorigins.si.edu/evidence/human-evolution-timeline-interactive
Just how engrained is this “new” environment, or is this new at all? Maybe we are the victims of Moore’s Law. Let’s look at speech.
The emergence of speech, the objects that hands had been manipulating became nouns with relationships. "Grammar is spatial" (Wilson, 2008^), and space is also sequential:
- idea - action - result
- hammer-hit-chipped stone: that is hammer (use rock as hammer); hit (the right kind of right stone in dozens of key places in the right sequence); make spearhead (and a complete spear might result); fasten the spearhead correctly to a shaft to make a spear.
- subject - verb - direct object
- This played out in progressive ways creating ever more powerful compositions and development of language and speech. Information and digital technologies are impacting our DNA, or at least the mutations in recent times.
- Ubiquitous
- Sustainable
- Socialized communication, Connected learning, Web-enabled, Internet-based
- Supports pedagogically progressive tenants
- Learner centered and individualized
- Constructivist by nature, builds on previous knowledge and leverages knowledge of others to create new knowledge and skills.
- Collaborative by design and Sharing is essential
- The tools require or fully integrate seamless collaboration, sharing and feedback/reflection because these are powerful motivators and methods to express what you know, are able to do and allows you to improve/build upon upon what others know and are able to do.
- Status is a reward, not a punishment (Gamification) Certifications, badges, All self and socially aware
- Democratization, Develops good citizenship and active engagement/involvement
Human Evolution as a Consideration:
- https://genographic.nationalgeographic.com/
- http://humanorigins.si.edu/evidence/human-evolution-timeline-interactive
- http://humanorigins.si.edu/evidence/human-family-tree
- https://genographic.nationalgeographic.com/human-journey/
- Mutations video http://youtu.be/dsiliJX9fCo?t=1m6s
- Retinal physiology, more receptors on the back of the cornea on recent generations.
- Speech development. As the joke goes, they would rather be in the casket instead of delivering the eulogy (Kitchen, 2005^). That is, our evolutionary development related to speech technology is still a work in progress. Is it our destiny to talk? Or, are we headed somewhere else genetically? Advancing communications technologies must be considered a possible future for primary communications over written and oral forms.
School curriculum will need to evolve beyond it's "Sabertooth Curriculum”
- That system should be built for constant change, it will not be a “silver bullet.”
- Metcalf's law says that the value of a network increases as the square of those participating.
- Over a billion people world wide use the Internet and the number doing so is increasing at an annual rate of almost 80%.
- Such data raises important questions of analysis and inference for all citizens of the world's democracies. (Can you think of any examples? Syria, Egypt, Iran, etc!)
- Questions: What are the long term implications of these concepts being applied over the span of a teaching career during the next 30 or so years? What kinds of schools and educational system practices could and should emerge given the trends discussed above?
- Deutschman noted three elements that have proven effective in building the capacity to change (2005). 1) People need a deep emotional positive frame of reference to sustain efforts to change. 2) Joy is more effective than threat. 3) Big changes that create major improvements quickly are more sustainable than incremental changes over a longer periods of time.
- Sustaining change requires ongoing support until new habits become established.
- One form of positive support can be found in gaming. Now the so called “Gamification” of Learning.
- The medical field has shown that video games have "significantly improved treatment adherence" (Kato, Cole, Bradlyn & Pollock, 2008) which has been confirmed through neuroscience study using MRI observations (Cole, Yoo, & Knutson, 2012).
- Aviation, the Space Program and the Military have many proven theories on the value of games (simulations) and learning.
- However, the leverage is in the game and gaming, not in whether the playing of the simulation is a computer application or not.
Jamie Casap, Google's Education Evangelist
"As the world gets more connected, it also gets more complex. We now operate on a global scale and our job in education is to help learners develop the knowledge, skills, and abilities they will need to thrive in this new environment. We are preparing them to solve global problems we haven’t defined yet, using technology that hasn’t been invented, in roles that do not exist. To thrive in this new era, learners need to know how to learn, engage, create, collaborate, communicate, and to think critically. We need to continually iterate education in pursuit of making it a powerful, effective, and engaging learning experience. Educators around the world are beginning to implement some promising approaches and models as they iterate education. Technology is enabling and supporting these iterations, and our job in technology is to make it easy to use, simple to manage, and effortlessly scalable."