If you’re new here and like what you read, you may want to subscribe to our RSS feed.
Thank you for visiting!

Martin Fackler writes for the IHT that parents in the “fad-obsessed nation” of Japan increasingly are sending their kids to Indian schools:

While China has stirred more concern as a political and economic challenger, India has emerged as the country to beat in a more benign rivalry over education. In part, this reflects the image in Japan of China as a cheap manufacturer and technological imitator. But Indian success in software development, Internet businesses and knowledge-intensive industries where Japan has failed to make inroads has sparked more than a tinge of envy.

This leads to three key questions that I do not have answers for: Is Indian success in knowledge industries due to their education system or something else? Will Indian forms of rote education instill Japanese youth with the creativity needed to compete in a knowledge and innovation economy? If the purpose of training kids in an Indian education system is to improve their chances of scoring well on a college entrance exam, what will happen to them once they enter college?

Education Futures is back from winter break! Regular postings will now resume.

Photo by darkmatter

Looking forward to the rest of this year, here are my predictions of the big stories in the global education world for 2008:

1. Largely driven by the moderate success of OLPC, Linux will emerge as the platform of choice for K-12 technology leaders. The OLPC will demonstrate that not only is Linux different, but it can also be used to do new and different things. Instead of using new technologies to teach the same old curricula, new technologies will be used to teach new things.
2. Web 2.0 will continue to democratize the globalization of higher education as more students and professors embrace open communications platforms. This means university administrations will have a harder time “owning” their global agendas.
3. Because of the influences of #1 and #2, education-oriented open source development will boom.
4. Chinese orientations toward the rest of the planet will change during the 2008 Olympics in Beijing. The Chinese widely view that the award to host the Olympics is a sign that their country is progressing positively –and of international acceptance. During the Olympics, however, much of the international attention will focus on revisiting the Tienanmen Square Massacre, the government’s treatment of political prisoners, the annexation of Tibet, the mainland’s relations with Taiwan, catastrophic ecological destruction throughout China, and many more sensitive topics. Unless if the Chinese can distract the world with Olympian splendor, they will have to endure international condemnation. What will this do to the millions of Chinese school kids who were drafted into generating national spirit under the false assumption that the world thinks China is doing a great job? Will China reorient its education system away from the West?
5. India’s the place to be. As more U.S. companies quietly continue to offshore their creative work to India, India’s knowledge economy will boom. The world will take notice of this in 2008.

Here are predictions for 2008 from elsewhere:

General

• The Futurist’s top 10 forecasts for 2008 and beyond
• 2008 Futurecasts review (to be followed by 2008 near futurecast in February)
• Breasts, violas and tulips: Alt predictions for 2008 (Wired)
• In between years: Trends and snippets (CNET)
• Innovation predictions 2008 (BusinessWeek)

Business and Economy

• No recession but… (BusinessWeek)
• Top 10 startups worth watching in 2008 (Wired)
• IT pros go hybrid in 2008 (Network World)

Environment

• 7 technologies that will save the Earth in 2008 (Ecogeek)
• IT leaders share green-tech predictions for 2008 (InfoWorld)
• Green for 2008: The car is reborn (CNET)

Media and Technology

• Gadgets and technology of 2008 (NPR podcast)
• 2008 media predictions (HP)
• Technology in 2008 (Economist) and a critique
• Top tech predictions for 2008 (Information Week)
• Media predictions for 2008 (BusinessWeek)

For a moment, consider the scale of education in India. Then, read this article:

The Director of Public Instruction (DPI) has issued orders making free software compulsory. It says Linux Operating System should be used for IT education in eighth, ninth and tenth standards.

This is huge for a huge country making a huge investment in IT. Big stuff.

I offer a question for discussion: When free software becomes mandatory, is it still what GNU founder Richard Stallman would term “free as in freedom?”

Lloyd Armstrong at Changing Higher Education posted comments on Laureate Education CEO Doug Becker’s move to China… to create something new, backed by financiers that include Paul Allen, George Soros, and the endowment of Harvard University:

I have long believed that real innovation in higher education will not come in the US, but from some area such as China or India where there are enormous higher education needs, and greatly constrained resources compared to those needs. It is there that the very expensive US model of higher education will run prove most ineffective. Apparently Doug Becker, Chairman and CEO of Laureate Education, is of the same opinion. He has just announced that he and his family are moving from Baltimore ( the home of Laureate) to Hong Kong so that he can establish a new Asia headquarters there.

Make sure to read Armstrong’s full post.

If the bulk of US tertiary institutions continue to stagnate due to legacy structures and cost disease, will the next leading higher education providers emerge in Asia?

Twenty years ago, playing games over a distance might have meant that you played turn-taking games like chess over email, and you were cutting edge. I remember people playing chess through snail mail! You would make your move and wait for a reply.

What is happening now is taking place in real-time in virtual environments that are interactive and look better than many films. Decisions, actions, and communications happen like they would in a face-to-face conversation, but they are done through a proxy, that is first and second-person perspectives with an avatar: a graphical representation of yourself in the game space.

Here is my avatar in Second Life.

He is a mix of Yoda, Pei Mei, Zatoichi, Master Po, and Real Ultimate Power. I would have liked to have made him old, but this is only possible if you learn to use some tools outside of the game to create more specialized characters. There are many who do this custom avatar creation, and the cool thing is that you could make your avatar something other than a person. Maybe a virus or a mailbox.

In fact, many people are already creating a comfortable living creating products for in game use. If you have not seen it yet, there are already success stories of people capitalizing on the new economies that virtual worlds have created.

In this Business Week article, one school teacher in Germany has made substantial gains flipping virtual property!

Imagine that you have the tools and access to build in these environments. In Second Life you do. You can visit models of the Sistine Chapel, Yankee Stadium, or even visit government agencies like the Center for Disease Control. You can build what you like on your virtual land.

What make this kind of play appealing is the ability to play and communicate when you want, and the possibility of meeting people from all over the planet. The prospect of building models and interacting in this environments should be very appealing to educators. This is an extension of the diorama. (Tomorrow I will talk about a project using these ideas in the classroom).

(Read more …)

We open our ten days of top ten lists with a list of global trends that force us to rethink education. What does the future hold for today’s students in the 21st Century? In a future driven by globalization, knowledge, innovation, and accelerating change, education will need to be re-missioned to meet new needs:

1. A global, knowledge-based society: Ubiquitous and ever-opening access to information creates a need for skilled workers who can transform information to meaningful, new knowledge.
2. The innovation-based society is emerging: Successful members of society will create innovative- and contextually-relevant applications for new knowledge.
3. Knowledge and innovation-based jobs are moving to India and China: Western companies have already learned that it makes sense to move industrial jobs offshore. Today, many companies are beginning to move their creativity and R&D jobs to markets with lower labor costs.
4. Personal success in the innovation society will require novelty at the individual level: Standardization and centralization at the workplace will give way to individualization and decentralization. Employees will be viewed and rewarded for their creative inputs as individuals, not for the roles they could play as proceduralized automatons.
5. Technology changes human relations: Advances in technology allow people to interact in new ways that were previously obscured by geographical, economic or social boundaries.
6. Jobs that exist today will not necessarily exist when today’s students finish school: Why do we insist on preparing students for jobs that existed before they were born instead of for jobs that will exist when they finish school?
7. An ageing population: Advances in sanitation, nutrition and medicine have extended life expectancy in many countries. The life span, about 127, is now the object of research and development. Should people be helped to live 2,500 years, or even “forever”?
8. Globalization: Tom Friedman is right. The world is flat. The phenomenon of globalization compels students and schools to compete on a global scale.
9. Change is accelerating: The doubling time of information is now under one year. In 20 years or less doubling time may drop to a few weeks. If our cultural institutions don’t change at least as fast, what will happen to our senses of identity and security? How can we become situated in the future as much as the present or past?
10. The Singularity is almost here: Human-surpassing intelligence will guarantee that the future is far more different than we can imagine. Are we supplying students with the creative skills required to thrive in a future that demands routine human creativity?

George Kubik, president of Minnesota Futurists, sent a note regarding the One Laptop per Child project, and a related article from Fortune Magazine. The $100 laptop is currently looking like a $176 laptop. Although prices are expected to decrease in the future, the $176 laptop is distant from what was envisioned originally.

India’s HRD ministry (which has rejected the OLPC) thinks it can do better, and is soliciting proposals for a $10 alternative. Writes Mark Raby at TG Daily:

The manufacturing cost has already been scaled down to $47, reports the India Times. So far no manufacturer has agreed to the $10 price. “The cost is encouraging and we are hopeful it would come down to $10. We would also look into the possibility of some Indian company manufacturing the parts,” said a ministry official.

Will this create competition in “open source” approaches to mobile educational technologies and lead to greater innovation? I hope so, but I must also caution against “cheapening” the quality and purposeful application of education technologies. Placing such limitations on the technologies could further limit the innovative uses for the devices by children inside and beyond the classrooms they’re intended for.

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.

Roger Martin writes that “Chinese and Indian companies aren’t leaving design to the North Americans”:

“There is a romantic notion in North American business that its future lies in design and innovation, while India and China will be the home of less skilled, lower-paying operations churning out the products and services the U.S. comes up with.

…

These globally oriented outfits are not entrusting all creativity, design, and innovation to ‘first world’ opponents while they huddle over their workstations. True, they have staggering cost advantages over traditional competitors.”

Ritzer (1998) writes that globalized systems “do not excel at innovation: they are at their best in implementing and rationalizing ideas stemming from other sources” (p. 178). Is the heavily globalized West about to discover that creativity and innovation cannot be commoditized and managed as such?

NewScientist reports:

Development giants China and India “hold the world in balance”, says a new report by a US environmental think tank.

“The choices these two countries make in the next few years will lead the world either towards growing ecological and political instability – or down a development path based on efficiency and better stewardship of resources,” says a report from the Worldwatch Institute in Washington DC, US.

The solution? A policy based on innovation.

But Flavin says countries like China and India have the chance to develop in a more benign way than already industrialised nations. “[By] leapfrogging today’s industrial powers, they can become world leaders in sustainable energy and agriculture within a decade,” he says.

Read the full article.