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Today marks the first release of Global Leapfrog Education (ISSN 1933-0200), an open access, online journal hosted by the Global Leapfrog Institute, LLC.

The official journal repository is located at http://www.leapfroginstitute.org/journal/index.php/gle

The GLE blog (located at http://www.leapfroginstitute.org/gle) will be used to broaden discussion and serve as an access point for sharing further ideas and resources.

As we learn to master the OJS journal software, articles will be released in two trenches. First, Cristobal Cobo (FLACSO Mexico) discusses new learning opportunities provided by “Web 2.0″ and successor technologies. In a near future release date, Arthur Harkins, myself and George Kubik (University of Minnesota) describe a leapfrog pathway through simulational learning.

Introduction and mission

Global Leapfrog Education (GLE) is devoted to exploring how, through education and human capital development, communities can transcend current problems and challenges by empowering themselves to invent their own futures. GLE publishes articles spanning a wide range of interests related to leapfrog education (viz. change, technologies, knowledge production and innovation, global youth leadership, and futures-oriented philosophies and theories of education). This journal provides open access to all of its content on the principle that making research freely available to the public supports a greater global exchange of knowledge.

Our electronic submission process is designed to facilitate rapid publication. Once an article is published, peer reviewers submit written, critical feedback to the author as an addendum to the article, published in GLE. Such reviews may be considered publications in their own right. Reviewers and other participants are also encouraged to contribute to discussions related to each article via the journal blog at http://www.leapfroginstitute.org/gle.

What is leapfrogging?

• Leapfrogging means jumping over obstacles to achieve goals.
• Leapfrogging is a leadership necessity.
• Leapfrogging saves precious time.
• Leapfrogging builds institutional and community prestige.
• Leapfrogging works best if everybody collaborates.

Focus and scope

The first country to adopt the Leapfrog Paradigm, bolster it with advanced communications technologies, and apply it in preschool through graduate contexts, will either continue to lead or will acquire newfound leadership among emerging knowledge and innovation economies.

We are aware of the need for simplicity, but the reality is that the Leapfrog Paradigm we describe is fundamentally cognitive in nature. It is the new educational mission required to support knowledge based innovation economies. New language and concepts are required.

The focus of GLE is on the language, concepts and education required to produce knowledge and direct it toward continuous innovation. This calls for an entirely new education mission –one that requires a different vocabulary and mindset compared to the now globally-distributed education missions for agricultural, industrial, and information-based societies.

GLE will help readers and contributors:

• Understand that states, regions and individuals are in a global competition in human capital development and application;
• Understand how technology shapes human world views and choices;
• Understand the relationship between technological change and social change with emphasis on the emerging Technological Singularity;
• Understand exponential acceleration of technological, scientific, societal and economic changes;
• Understand multiple perceived realities and their vectors;
• Develop leapfrog education scenarios related to technology, innovation, systems design and integration; and,
• Connect these leapfrog scenarios with 21st Century education redesign and redirection.

Journal keywords and key concepts

accelerating change, basic knowledge engine ecology, creativity, cybernetics, design, entrepreneurship, global leapfrog education, invention, innovation, knowledge engine ecologies, knowledge production, knowledge engine ecologies, memes and new social patterns in thought and belief, sociocultural prosumers, youth development

Full information on the journal architecture and instructions to contributors is located at http://www.leapfroginstitute.org/journal/index.php/gle/article/view/3/3

I’ve refrained from commenting on politics up to now, but this is too absurd to be ignored any longer.

According to Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility:

Grand Canyon National Park is not permitted to give an official estimate of the geologic age of its principal feature, due to pressure from Bush administration appointees. Despite promising a prompt review of its approval for a book claiming the Grand Canyon was created by Noah’s flood rather than by geologic forces, more than three years later no review has ever been done and the book remains on sale at the park, according to documents released today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER).

As we approach the end of 2006, and continue our march through the 21st Century, some of us are left behind — evidently in the Dark Ages. Science and reason continue to be downplayed and minimized through fanciful thinking by the Bush administration. This level of leadership intelligence is also displayed by my cat. Mind you he’s pretty dumb. In fact, he’s so dumb that he thinks that if he can’t see you, you can’t see him. Whenever he wants to hide from something, he only hides his head. The Bush administration likewise hides its head under the ground (apparently ignoring the surrounding geological evidence as it does so), and believes it can transcend reality through ignorance.

As we move into 2007, I implore Mr. Bush to:

• Accept the role of science in schools
• Discontinue the “sanitization” of scientific releases by his political operatives
• Quit trying to revise history to serve his political agenda
• Get his head out of… uh… the ground

Sans commentaire…

At yesterday’s Horizon Forum meeting, Chris Dede delivered a presentation via Skype on using multiple-user virtual environments in educational contexts. These environments, he argues, allows students to co-design and co-instruct their own educational experiences, allowing for guided social constructivism and learning that goes beyond what traditional schools try to accomplish through test-based assessments.

Scott McLeod continued with a discussion on preparing students for the new millennium rather than the industrial age. With the pace of change accelerating, schools, by design, are not able to keep up with society. Schools are in danger of becoming irrelevant unless if they do away with reactionary, compliance-based management and build future-oriented, proactive (and preactive!) leadership.

Finally, with Garth Willis’ help, we experimented with recording the session as a Macromedia Breeze meeting. The recording is available online at: https://breeze5.umn.edu/p44056320/ (sorry, the first twenty minutes of audio are missing).

The next Horizon Forum is scheduled for February 5, 2007, and will focus on advances in innovative learning in Latin America.

Pressured largely by publication delays and a bandwidth limit in the amount of information and knowledge that can be distributed through traditional academic publishing formats, the “hard sciences” have made inroads in expanding the growth of the open sharing of research and ideas. The accelerating rate of change of knowledge and shortening of the half-life of knowledge in the 21st Century render traditional publication and knowledge sharing methods obsolete. Open access libraries such as the Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory collaboratory project and the National Fusion Collaboratory allow for the rapid sharing of ideas and rapid publication.

With few exceptions, these open collaboratories are absent from the social sciences. FLACSO México initiated a collaboratory project that can help fill the gap: Colaboratorios (the name is a play on “collaboration” and “laboratory”). Allowing authors to publish under a Creative Commons license, Colaboratios provides space for the sharing of ideas through publication of papers, a collaborative wiki, shared blog, and Skype-based conferences.

Check it out. Non-Spanish speakers may want to use the Babel Fish.