Keeping with Education Futures’ annual tradition, I released five predictions for global education in 2009 early last year.

How did I do?

Much better than my predictions for 2008! Let’s look:

1. No Child Left Behind won’t get left behind. Contrary to all the data that shows that NCLB is a miserable failure, it still has too many fans within the Washington Beltway to disappear. Besides, would the Obama administration want to send a message that they’re giving up on the noble quest of educating all children? NCLB is here to stay, but it will evolve into something else. Would we recognize it by 2010? — Yes, NCLB is still here, but it hasn’t changed a bit. Perhaps there’s hope for 2010?
2. The economic downturn will get much worse before it gets better, but the international impact will be greater than within the U.S. Expect economic tragedies in China and elsewhere that depend on exports to the U.S. and other highly industrialized nations. — The jury’s still out on this one. We’ll have to wait until the recession is over for hindsight … especially the impact on China.
3. With limits in available venture capital and new development funds within corporations, technological innovation will slow in the United States. Companies will focus on improving their core products and services at the expense of research and development. What does this mean for education, which is in desperate need of transformative, innovative technologies? — The effect on schools, which are dependent on tax revenue, was much worse in 2009 than I could imagine. Many institutions are abandoning thinking about innovative ideas to focus instead on how they will pay for basic services such as bussing and utilities.
4. The footprint of open source software will increase, but development will slow down. Unless if a business is committing code to the OSS community, individuals and corporations have fewer time resources available to contribute to projects. However, OSS adoption will increase as a cost-saving measure in homes, offices and schools. (This contrasts with last year’s prediction, where I said “education-oriented open source development will boom.”) — The real growth in 2009 was centered around social technologies and social media. Many of these can translate into the education sector well.
5. I’m keeping my money on India, and repeating last year’s prediction: India is 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 2009. — India continues to develop its human capital resources. I’m keeping my money here through 2010 as well.

I like conceptual maps –tools for illustrating the relationships among ideas– and, Tero Heiskanen created an interesting one. It’s huge. Without any further commentary:

Settlers of the shift is an open map of experts, organizations and ideas that are scattered around the globe. It’s for people whose work is shifting us towards a better tomorrow – a New World Order 2.0. This map aims to encourage people to connect across sectors and enable you to tie partnerships with like-minded individuals.

And:

Six values are suggested as a common backbone for the partnerships:

• Justice: fair and honest treatment of everyone involved
• Co-creation: synergistic dialogue and collaboration
• Meaningfulness: solutions to problems worth solving
• Generosity: giving time and resources for the sake of giving
• Dignity: acting in a respectful and ethical manner
• Abundance: denying artificial scarcity and limitations

(Thanks to Pekka Ihanainen for sharing this find!)

By changing the name to Syfy, which remains phonetically identical, the new brand broadens perceptions and embraces a wider range of current and future imagination-based entertainment beyond just the traditional sci-fi genre, including fantasy, supernatural, paranormal, reality, mystery, action and adventure. It also positions the brand for future growth by creating an ownable trademark that can travel easily with consumers across new media and nonlinear digital platforms, new international channels and extend into new business ventures.

This change highlights a key problem: it’s getting hard to imagine the future.

Science fiction literature of the previous two centuries predicted amazing things (i.e., artificial satellites, undersea exploration, teleconferencing) that have become common elements of our lives. This worked well when the pace of change was much slower. But, over the past few decades, the rate of social and technological change has started to take off, and the genre is grinding to a halt as people hit the limits of their imagination and foresight. The moment where change occurs so rapidly that we cannot imagine what will happen next is the Technological Singularity.

Perhaps SciFi’s move away from science fiction is a sign the Singularity is nearer than we think?

“Imagine [...] turning on your home computer to read the day’s newspaper.”

…and, 28 years later, newspapers are shutting down because they cannot compete with the home computer.

Continuing a tradition that started last year, I am listing my predictions for the big stories that will impact the education world in 2009.  My predictions from last year were hit-and-miss, but I did well overall.  How will I fare this year?

Minnesota Public Radio News is interested in learning more about what is going on with Minnesota’s declining and low Adequate Yearly Progress results. What are the underlying factors in these numbers? What is contributing? We would like you to help us learn! Working wuth Education Futures, I am sure that you have an informed and connected insight. We would love to hear from you.

You can help us learn more about Minnesota education and our recent AYPs at:
http://tinyurl.com/mprschooltests

And to learn more about the Public Insight Journalism Network, please go to:
http://americanpublicmedia.publicradio.org/publicinsightjournalism/

We would also love if you could post some information on our query in your blog, or pass that link along to students, volunteers, parents, co workers, a neighbor — anyone you feel may have thoughtful and informed insight into the topic.

Here is some info and links you can post:

More Minnesota schools failed to meet federal No Child Left Behind standards. Why?
The Minnesota Department of Education shows that a greater number of state schools are failing to meet federal education standards, falling nearly 10 percent from the previous year.
The survey also shows that, for the first time, most of the decline was in suburban schools.
What’s going on in your school?
Help MPR News understand what’s behind the increase. Please click here.
While Minnesota students actually got better test scores this year, only half the schools in Minnesota made adequate yearly progress, according to federal guidelines.That’s down from two-thirds last year and three-quarters in 2006 (for more information, read this story).

Most of this year’s decline was in the suburbs, since Minneapolis and St. Paul schools showed little change. Only four more urban schools were added to the state’s watch list this year, out of about 160.
What are the underlying factors for these numbers? What would you say are the one or two most significant reasons for the increase in schools failing to make AYP?
From your vantage point as a student, a parent, a teacher or administrator, help MPR News understand the significance of these test results. Tell us your insights.

A colleague who works with the Minnesota Department of Education on projects responded, “don’t they know that AYP is a conspiracy?”

More on this story tomorrow…  that is, if I can get my colleague to guest blog…!

I just got an email from an intl ed colleague that made my day! I have inspired someone in the field to explore social media/networking. [elaborated here]

This got me thinking. In international and intercultural education programs, most practitioners are entirely missing opportunities with social media –the blending of technology, social interaction, and the co-construction of new knowledge (crowdsourcing). Blending innovative technologies with these programs seems to be the exception and not the norm. Popular social media technologies today are largely centered around the “Web 2.0″ universe: Blogs (i.e., Education Futures), microblogs (i.e., Twitter and Jaiku), social networks (i.e., MySpace and Facebook), instant messaging with audio/video conferencing (i.e., Skype), virtual reality (i.e., Second Life), and a growing list of other innovations.

What social media means for…

• Students: The ability to interact across cultures, virtually and directly, means that students may not need the massive study abroad infrastructure built up by universities, non-profits and for-profit organizations to guide them in their intercultural experiences. They can do it themselves, perhaps glean more meaningful experiences, and do it cheaper! Maya Frost is writing a book on this, and argues that students who want “an outrageously relevant global education” don’t even need universities.
• Study abroad programs: Start innovating now or risk obsolescence. The market for study abroad is already competitive. Study abroad programs need to consider how they might integrate social media and crowdsourcing into their business models. Since most college-aged students are social media natives, these programs will have a lot of work to do to interface meaningfully with students.
• Study abroad advisors: How much formal advising is done via Twitter or Facebook? Not much. The reality is that students can advise each other through social media. Study abroad advisors either get up to speed with social media or start looking for new careers. Social media provides new pathways to international and intercultural education, and, if you’re not on that path, you will be left behind.
• Intercultural researchers: This is exciting stuff! We can create new forms of study abroad (i.e., “virtual study abroad” through co-seminars), create and/or analyze new culture creation through new social technologies, and radically transform our approaches to international and intercultural education.

What’s next?

Social media will not be the last innovations to pressure the transformation of international and intercultural education programs. To survive, these programs need to incorporate a new culture that allows continuous transformation toward opening themselves –and embracing– new, transformative technologies.  Culture change is difficult thing to do.  At least interculturalists are experts at it!

People think you are all a little nuts. Digital learning? What on earth can you be meaning? A lot of head-banging. Digital learning? You wade in together. Run a competition. People say, oh, that’s really obscure, maybe you’ll get a hundred applications. Maybe you’re ahead of your time. Or too late.

1010 applications too late. Or too early.

!!!

Approximately 20 winners will be announced in February. How can we find funding for the other 990 great ideas?

This morning, Education Futures contributor Dr. Cristóbal Cobo (read his blog) presented his ideas at a University of Minnesota’s Institute for New Media Studies and Digital Technology Center research breakfast on his new book, Planet Web 2.0: Collective Intelligence or Fast Food Media (English translation). The event was also webcast by the University’s Supercomputing Institute. (A link to the recorded video will be posted when it becomes available.)

A debate followed the presentation on the roles and values of online technologies. Most puzzling for academicians in the audience was how might reconcile the need for producing peer-reviewed, “academic” publications with freely available, open material. Whereas a journal article might solicit a handful of readers, an open document might bring in thousands more (for example, Planet 2.0, which was issued under a Creative Commons license, has already registered over 61,000 downloads in the first few weeks since its release). Our promotion and tenure process, however, recognizes only publications that appear in traditional print media. Why?

At the end of the event, Dr. Cobo was approached regarding an open sourced effort toward translating the book from Spanish to English by the Department of Spanish and Portuguese Studies. Planeta 2.0 approaches…!