In the current issue of On the Horizon, Arthur Harkins and I introduce systemic approaches to knowledge development and application — that is, a framework which provides a systems-language descriptive means for understanding and engaging in an expanding ecology of knowledge development options. We call this “MET” : mechanical (conservatively repetitive), evolutionary (self-organizing), and teleogenic (purposively creative). Many of the characteristics of the MET framework are summarized in this table (click to enlarge):

From the article:

American preK-12 schooling systems may be primarily mechanical, but some of their students may learn at home or on the internet in parallel evolutionary and teleological ways. The question is how such students can survive the conservative impacts of the outdated majority culture mechanical model, especially if it is delivered in unsophisticated and undemanding ways. They may have to depend upon self-education, the help of their parents, and luck to avoid becoming the casualties of a declining knowledge-resistant culture. We believe that the MET archetypes, buttressed by [augmented reality], can help such people, beginning immediately.

Continue on to the full article in OTH…

About a year ago, Cristóbal Cobo and I announced a research project called Invisible Learning. After many months of work, collecting experiences, researching literature, interviews, and exchanges with experts (and –above all– many hours of writing), we can announce that in 2011 the Invisible Learning book will be a reality (in print and digital formats).

Details about the upcoming book, Invisible Learning: Toward a new ecology of education, are available at http://invisiblelearning.com — and, because we will first publish in Spanish, the website is (for now) in Spanish. We will roll out an English edition of the website and book later in 2011.

The project has exceeded all of our expectations. Not only in terms of interest (over 15,000 references in Google, 7,500 TEDx video playbacks in Spanish and many as well in English), but in the scope of contributions from universities and researchers in the United States, Spain, Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, Mexico, United Kingdom, Netherlands and Finland. We view this as a global commitment (Western, at least) to take a transnational perspective on education at all levels.

The ingredients from these sources are combined in this work to build a large map of ideas, proposals, experiences, tools, methodologies, and research frameworks that seek to make visible those invisible components that lie behind learning. This text seeks out new questions about learning for the upcoming decades.

Although the text has a critical perspective, resulting from the analysis of the shortcomings of educational systems, it also seeks to highlight innovative and transformative initiative that are launching in various corners of the globe.

We do not offer magical fixes for the problems identified, but we assemble the pieces of a conceptual puzzle, constructed from: Society 3.0; lifelong learning; the use of technologies outside of the classroom; soft skills; methodologies for building education futures; serendipic discovery; the hybridization between formal and informal learning; skills for innovation; edupunk and edupop; expanded education; digital maturity; Knowmads and knowledge agents; plus many new literacies relevant to the times in which we live.

We believe that the vested interest and the support provided by dozens of collaborators and institutions such as the Laboratori de Mitjans Interactus (LMI) at the University of Barcelona (publisher) are a living demonstration of the deep interest that exists for building a better education for tomorrow. Hugo Pardo, editor and the publisher’s tireless engine of this book provides some insight on his blog. We will write more about this project and its “added values” as it approaches publication. Stay tuned!

The Education Futures timeline of education

1657 – 2045

By John Moravec (Updated May 30, 2010)

This timeline of the history of modern education provides not only a glimpse into the past and present, but plots out a plausible future history for human capital development. The future history presented is intended to be edgy, but also as a conversation starter on futures for education and future thinking in human capital development.

Although this timeline is largely U.S.-centric, the trends impacting it are global, especially as we look to the future. Please consult the glossary, below, for additional information regarding many of the themes presented. As always, we invite your feedback and suggestions for further development!

To share this timeline in your blog or website, insert the following code:

<div><iframe src="http://www.educationfutures.com/flashtimeline/index.html" width="610" height="310" scrolling="no"
frameborder="0"></iframe><p>Source: <a href="http://www.educationfutures.com/resources/timeline">
Education Futures</a></p></div>

Or, to insert a smaller version (500px wide), click here for the code.

Last month, IBM took out a two-page advertisement in the Wall Street Journal that touted their vision for a smarter planet. They believe:

The world continues to get “smaller” and “flatter.” But we see now that being connected isn’t enough. Fortunately, something else is happening that holds new potential: the planet is becoming smarter.

That is, intelligence is being infused into the way the world literally works—into the systems, processes and infrastructure that enable physical goods to be developed, manufactured, bought and sold. That allow services to be delivered. That facilitate the movement of everything from money and oil to water and electrons. And that help billions of people work and live.

Furthermore, they write that the smarter planet is powered by three drivers:

• The world is becoming instrumented. By 2010, there will be a billion transistors per human, each one costing one ten-millionth of a cent.
• The world is becoming interconnected. With a trillion networked things—cars, roadways, pipelines, appliances, pharmaceuticals and even livestock—the amount of information created by those interactions grows exponentially.
• All things are becoming intelligent. Algorithms and powerful systems can analyze and turn those mountains of data into actual decisions and actions that make the world work better. Smarter.

What does this mean for the futures of our various institutions?  For our hopes in quality of life?  IBM examines these questions in their blog, Building a Smarter Planet. They don’t provide answers, but they get the conversation going.

With the world becoming increasingly instrumented, interconnected, and intelligent, what new opportunities and challenges are presented to education and human capital development systems?

Four primary scenarios were developed from the projects activities:

• Market Rules (business): The story of consolidation in the face of a system that has been so successful that it is collapsing under its own weight
• Whose Game? (geopolitics): The story of conflict in the face of changing geopolitical balances and competing ambitions
• Trees of Knowledge (society): The story of erosion in the face of diminishing societal trust
• Blue Skies (technology): The story of differentiation in the face of global systemic crises

These scenarios are driven by five driving forces that create the most uncertainty:

• Power: “globalisation has redefined this power structure, with established sources of authority – such as governments – challenged by the many new powerful actors that are forming alliances and cutting across traditional boundaries”
• Global Jungle: “economic, social and political competitive flattening of the world between a multiplicity of players that include countries, regions, hotspots and city states, market sectors, global companies, organisational and business models, consumer markets and workforces, business and universities as well as cultures. In this global jungle, there are many who are ill-equipped to adapt.”
• Rate of Change: “The growing divide between the short and long-term goals leads us to ask: How do humans and their institutions adjust to cope with the rate of change?”
• Systemic Risks: “There are also major risks created by our dependency on the complex natural and man-made systems that support humanity.”
• Knowledge Paradox: “The transformation of data into information and then into knowledge – information that can be utilised to build capabilities – is also far from straightforward. This raises the question: As information becomes increasingly abundant, what knowledge has value?”

More is available in the free “Scenarios for the Future” compendium, which is available from the EPO website.

There is something about human nature that restlessly seeks to improve things. But instead of asking “Can we?” innovate to improve what exists and create what doesn’t, companies need to ask “Should we?”

[...]

Overshooting happens in just about every industry. It tends to start in the least demanding tiers of the market and creep up to more demanding tiers. Overshooting creates conditions that encourage the formation of disruptive attackers who change the game through simplicity or low prices.

Simplifications can be innovations, too. The success of the iPod and iPhone can be credited to their simplistic designs. Likewise, the minimalism movement transformed the post-WWII design world. Education systems, in the meantime, have transformed into highly-engineered organisms.

Can simple work in education, too?

Driven by a New Paradigm of globalization, rise of the knowledge society and accelerating change, the education sector is in dire need of innovative transformations. Rather than over-engineering solutions to the challenges we face in education, are there simple, yet seemingly elegant, pathways to successful futures?

But not just any games. The kinds of games that require some flexibility in problem solving are the ones I am most interested in. By looking at these games we can consider some of the elements that might inform how we engage students in well-designed instruction.

Games have not changed much.

There are some different genres now, and computers take much of the computation out of the complex games that we would have played in small groups. You can now play Risk, Monopoly, D & D, and stat sheet baseball all on the computer.

But what makes games fun are the same some core elements that have always been there.

The reason I have them in this order is that the first games I have seen my toddlers engage in is imaginative play. Is imaginative play a game? The kids take the toys and do what they do. Making sounds and telling us stories about what is happening; they put pillows under the table and make a race car. This is really productive learning. It is modeling and practicing what they see in the world. So perhaps imaginative play is not a game from the perspective of a formal definition, but it is often at the root of games with narratives.

Games with narratives are important for passing on cultural and professional knowledge.

But some games do not always have narratives. Cribbage does not have a narrative, neither does kick ball.

The big idea is that some games have these elements and some do not. But games can be a model for developing culturally valued skills, or for entering worlds of story and preparing for the development of competencies. What would happen if you explained to your kids that chess was a model for practicing battlefield tactics? Games are often representative of some abstracted system. In chess, you don’t have all of the details that make war tedious, like supply lines, morale, weather. But what you do have is a formalized system that necessitates strategy, resource management, and creative tool use. In addition, one must use the imagination to visualize all of the potential moves your opponent might do to counter. This kind of predictive play is the same kind method Einstein used in his thought experiment for Special Relativity.

When we think of this first step, we need to remember that play and games are powerful tools that take the facts, often conveyed in a lecture of from a text, and ask us to interact with them as processes and contexts. This potentially offers opportunities to develop deeper and more flexible knowledge of the system being described, rather than just memorizing it. Science can be taught this way, and so can literature and any other content area that has methods of inquiry. What you are doing is when you create games is the creation of models of the world and then modifying them to explore, fantasize, escape, and maybe try on a new identity.

Einstein used this same tool for imagining special relativity! The point of this taxonomy is not to place value in the sequence, but I have noticed that each one seems to build into the next for adding complexity. Imaginative games seem to come early.

As kids imagine their play, they often begin to take on the roles and identities of who they are imitating. They eventually learn that there are rules that come with roles, i.e., white hat cowboys don’t rustle horses, or the rules are made up for new variations as they play—as in, “No, you can’t do that. You are the baby, I’m the mommy “, or “let’s turn the submarine into a spaceship.”

These possible worlds are powerful.

And as children progress with age, we start to see them playing more formalized games developed in our cultures, like board games, signifying, soccer, kick the can, rapping, and telephone. Games are beginning to gain structure here with rules, and from here they can become somewhat complicated when we add elements that create uncertainty like branching, new rules, and probability. These more advanced games may provide the kid of habits of mind that can deliver the kind of complex problem solving many of today’s careers demand. Life is not always as you would expect. This is what I am hoping we begin to embrace in our lesson designs.

This is where games like D & D and other adventure and role playing games come in. They are built on the idea that given a certain situation, rules and roles will create certain contexts, and there might be a variety of solutions. Oddly enough, games develop this complexity very early on for kids. Just recall Chutes and Ladders®. In it there was a board squares and you moved in the squares in a linear or straightforward process. You probably know that the spinner brings luck in, but what makes the game more than just a horse race is the fact that are rules built into the board too. If you land on a chute, you might be sent back; if you land on a ladder, you might accelerate forward several levels on the path.

The importance of this is that there are many ways through a game. The elements of branching and probability demand this variable experience. When you add other elements like the way Monopoly has squares on the game board where you have to take a card like Chance or Community Cents, or you have to pay rent on some one’s land or hotel, or you decide to buy it, you have to adapt and act.

What this is leading to is games and designing classroom instruction can be very similar in their approach. A key to making it playful is allowing for non-linearity—that is uncertainty. Knowing that people may experience and play in different ways, and that people like this.

Do you have a lesson where the kids can make it different but just as good? The assessments can reflect the way games guide play through criteria and structure. The key is creating some latitude in how you evaluate the final product.

Things teacher should think about:

Games and lesson plans can be designed with the same elements.

Uncertainty can be stressful, but the right amount can be exciting.

Complex games have complex problems. You may have to have do overs.

Complex games often utilize all of the elements of listed in the taxonomy in different combinations and permutations, thus demanding the player to understand the problem and react on the spot. If they don’t get it, they can try again. If they are good problems, kids will persist and seek solutions.

There can be many solutions to a problem. It is good to allow for many approaches, even if this takes more time. These alternative explanations allow for greater variety of solutions, creativity, and flexible thinking.

Senge argues traditional organizational leaders need to “revolutionize” their management philosophy toward the highly conceptual approach of systems thinking as the basis for building learning organizations. He adds this “fifth discipline” to four others: building shared vision, mental models, team learning and personal mastery. Learning organizations are defined as “organizations where people continually expand their capacity to create the results they desire, where new and expansive patterns of thinking are nurtured, where collective aspiration is set free, and where people are continually learning how to learn together” (p.3).

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