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Arthur Harkins and I delivered a presentation on “Meaningful knowledge production by 21st century youth” at the 2nd International Conference on Youth and Education for the 21st Century at Texas A&M, Corpus Christi, TX on May 31. Read on for the abstract or download the PowerPoint slides from www.leapfrogamerica.org.

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This is a great article!

Online education often provides too much explicit knowledge and too little tacit knowledge and social interaction. In this article, John Seely Brown and Douglas Thomas identify an avenue for tacit knowledge production in virtual settings. As virtual reality is becoming more-and-more preferred over the real world, perhaps the “Leapfrog U” would find its greatest success embedded in the World of Warcraft, the Sims, Ever Quest, Final Fantasy XII, Second Life, etc., etc., etc…

Finland has been the subject of many discussions about leapfrogging in education. Now, it has accomplished another amazing feat. Lordi, the undead space monsters from Finland, won this year’s Eurovision contest. I can’t stop laughing. Watch the video.

India eNews.com reports that Intel is to make India its global hub for innovation. Intel plans to invest US$1 billion to expand its research and development operations in the country as part of its “World Ahead Initiative.” According to Intel CEO Paul Otellini:

‘Over the next five years, the initiative aims at helping accelerate the global spread of technology access, broadband connectivity and education in developing and developed countries,’ the official said.

With India becoming one of its key emerging markets, Intel plans to make its development centre, including the research and development facility here.

Link to the full story.

From the IST program:

If computers could create a society, what kind of world would they make? Thanks to the work of an ambitious project that adds a whole new meaning to the phrase, ‘computer society’, in which millions of software agents will potentially evolve their own culture, we could be about to find out.

With funding from the European Commission’s Future and Emerging Technologies (FET) initiative of the IST programme, five European research institutes are collaborating on the NEW TIES project to create a thoroughly 21st-century brave new world – one populated by randomly generated software beings, capable of developing their own language and culture.

Read the full article.

Date: May 17, 2006

To: All Participants

From: Arthur Harkins and John Moravec

Subject: Building a “Leapfrog” University: Renovating Undergraduate Education (Version 4.0)

“A Noble Quest” (as suggested by Robert Giampietro, retired VP, Target Corp.)

A new paradigm founded on the convergence of globalization, the rise of knowledge societies, and accelerating change is emerging. This calls for an entirely new mission for all levels of education with a new mindset and vocabulary for action. The Leapfrog Paradigm emerges when societies, organizations and individuals employ innovative means to surge ahead of the competition. Consider the Leapfrog Paradigm in Minnesota, and:

Imagine a second “Minnesota Miracle”…

• Where Minnesota is the leader among knowledge and innovation economies
• Where no Minnesota student fails in schools and colleges
• Where Minnesota’s citizens are the global standard for leading edge human capital development and application

Imagine the University of Minnesota…

• As the leading university in the world within a decade
• As one crucial link in a chain of free education opportunities for PreK-17 learners
• Bolstered with advanced networking technologies to support continuous innovation from the freshman year onward

Imagine Minnesota students…

• Having completed a University of Minnesota graduate degree by age 21
• As innovators, leaders, and visionary change agents

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ZDNet is running a blog story on the Singularity Summit at Stanford University. Particular attention in the article is focused on the debate between Ray Kurzweil and Douglas Hofstader on utopian versus dystopian futures:

Kurzweil acknowledged that Singularity could lead to an unappealing or cataclysmic future, but he believes his vision will have a soft landing. If the technologies were considered too dangerous, it would require a totalitarian society, would deprive people of the benefits of technology innovation and drive it underground. In his view, narrow relinquishment of dangerous information and investing in defenses is a morely likely, or hopeful, outcome.

Meanwhile, Hofstader:

expressed the ‘human’ concern of uploading ourselves into cyberspace, becoming software entities inside of computing hardware as our destiny. “If that’s the case how will the entire world, enviroment in which we live be modeled,” he asked. “What does it mean for humans to survive in cyberspace, and what is the core of a person. It’s not clear what a human being would be in such an environment.”

Read the full post on ZDNet.

Use this space to post your comments regarding the Horizon Forum and leapfrogging in PreK-17 education.

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Use this space to post your comments regarding the Building a “Leapfrog” University series.

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This year’s April/May issue of Innovate includes an interview by James Morrison with Joel Barker and Scott Erickson, who:

propose an ecological model that classifies technology according to different clusters or regions, each of which entails its own perspective of technology and how such technology should be utilized. Their five regions model thus shifts the focus away from defining technology in terms of its origins and towards defining it in terms of values, purposes, and results.

This is an interesting read, but I am not particularly impressed with the five regions model. In particular, it needs an “ideo tech,” or space for masternarratives, as well as a space to accommodate culture and new culture formation. Without these spaces, the model lacks the recognition of purposive, transformative, goal-oriented (and goal-generative) change.

View the Innovate article.