Education Innovation

14 Trends Of The New Educational Reality (Part 1-Trends 1-7)

What do you get when you combine a meatball sundae, home/school communication, brand management, the New York Times best sellers list, Google, homework, outsourcing, and the definitions of literacy? Let’s put them in the Education Innovation blender and find out.

In his book Meatball Sundae, Seth Godin describes 14 Trends of New Marketing. I put these trends under the lens of education and call them the New Reality.

Trend 1: Direct Communication and Commerce Between Producers and Consumers
Consumers demand speed. Businesses need to respond quickly to consumer demands or the consumer will go elsewhere. Consumers can now connect directly to the top of an organization. They expect a response. Technology is changing the way organizations and customers interact.

Our students and parents live in a world with the ability to communicate with an organization and expect a quick response. Is the use of technology in your school changing the way you interact with students and parents? Are you responding to the needs of your students and parents and communicating that response effectively? If students and parents can communicate directly with the school, how important is the response you give back? How quick do you respond? Do you view it as a burden or an opportunity to spread your educational vision and message?

Trend 2: Amplification Of The Voice Of The Consumer and Independent Authorities.
Every interaction with a consumer is an interaction with a critic (or potential critic).
Everybody, student, parent, community member has a voice that can be amplified through technology. What are they going to say about your school?  What are they going to say about your educational brand? (You do have a brand, whether you like it or not.)

The web remembers forever. A poorly written email can be posted in minutes to the web.  Blogs allow students, parents, and community members into instant publishers. YouTube allows them to become movie producers. What are the publishing or producing about you? You may have a point of view on an issue, but who is better able to get their message out, you or the student run blog posting pictures, YouTube videos, and podcasts? Your schools reputation is always on the line and on-line. What is being said about you?

Trend 3: Need For An Authentic Story As The Number Of Sources Increases
Stories spread, not facts. So what stories are being told about your school and your teachers? A story is a symbol of who you are. Do you know your symbol? Do you care? Why would anyone want to go to your school? What makes your teachers so great?

Technology is allowing for students and parents to share their stories about you. Are you sharing your own stories? Do you have an educational brand that you trying to spread? What kind of message is your school trying to spread? There is a story about your school, the question is, is it your story or somebody else’s version?

Trend 4: Extremely Short Attention Spans Due To Clutter
There is a multitude of choices and a deluge of interruptions for students and parents. Commercials went from a minute to thirty seconds to, in some cases, three seconds. A bestseller was on the New York bestsellers list for 22 weeks, now it’s on the list for two. Books are shorter. Not enough time to read the book, listen to the audio version in the car. YouTube has over 7 million video. Most are only watched for less than 10 seconds. If it’s not good we move on.

That is the world you student is living in. If the don’t like it, the switch it, drop it, or change it. They don’t have to wait for something better. They are in control.

What about in the classroom? How much time do you get to grab their attention, make it meaningful, and engage before they drop you? They may be forced to sit there, but they aren’t forced to learn. The world is catering to their desire to move on. Your teaching can’t afford to be good enough. It must be great or it won’t cut through all the clutter or the world they are living in. You can’t count on their attention and engagement. You have to compete for it and win it.

Trend 5: The Long Tail
“Any market of people with sufficient resources will get very pick on you.”
People want choice. Students and parents want choice. Education does not have to provide that choice. (For now) Students have to go to school. They have to go to school in your district. They may be allowed to move within your district, but for the most part, they are assigned to you. You didn’t have to earn them, they were just sent to you. But you can’t rely on that forever.

Your students and parents live in a world where they can find nearly any book they want at Amazon. More of them are watching YouTube videos than the top ten television shows. Online they can find a hundred times more inventory than a retail store. You can find nearly anything on Google. The digital world means products are easy to store and easy to customize to the individual need.

So, if they can find nearly anything they want or need online and have it customized to their needs, what makes you think they need your school? They can find the learning they want online, learn what they want, when they want, where they want, and at the pace they want. So why should they want you? What is it about your educational brand or story that makes them want to choose you?

Trend 6: Outsourcing
You assign the project or the paper and then your student goes home and out sources the work online to some student in India or Sri Lanka. Why not? A report you want, a report you shall get. It costs your students and parents to connect with people in any part of the world to share skills, abilities, and resources. Homework for sale via the Internet is a reality. There is not sense trying to stop it, it’s already out there. The question is how can you adjust your assignment to make them meaningful and engaging so the student won’t outsource the work.

It’s not just assignments. When I can hire online tutors, watch educational videos, or get language lessons through my web cam, outsourcing teaching is here too. What are you doing about that reality?  Maybe just you are just going to rely on the old model of, “You have to go here. You live here.”  That may work for you, but that is not the world your students are growing up in.

Trend 7: Google And The Dicing Of Everything
Having the teacher in your classroom is no longer a reason to believe that is where the teaching and learning is going to happen. Students are a few clicks away from being connected to people all around the world who are willing to teach and tutor.

Google has allowed us to find any piece of information or facts we would ever want to know. In fact, in the new reality, it is not the piece of information or fact; it’s how to find it. Students don’t want to memorize names, dates, formulas, etc., that they can just look up in Google. Why? Why memorize what is right at my fingertips? They key is learning how to find the facts or information. Google has changed literacy? It not longer memorizing the “what”, but knowing where and how to find the “what.”

We will look at Trends 8-14 in a later post.

Catalytic Questions:

How might your view of parent/student communication change if you knew it was being used to judge your school or yourself?

In what ways are you using technology to communicate with students and parents to spread your educational vision and brand? 

Is it effective? What might you change, add, or subtract from what you are currently doing?

Do you know what is being said about you and your school online?

Do you have an educational brand and are you managing it effectively?

In what ways are you or might you leverage technology to communicate your educational brand and your school’s story?

What is your school’s story?

How might your teaching change if you understood that you must compete and win your students’ attention?

What might this look like in the classroom?

Are you relying on the current lack of choice parents and students have, or are you thinking and preparing yourself for the power of choice they will soon demand?

If students and parents could choose, why would they choose you?
How might your thinking on assignments change based on the knowledge that students can outsource the work?

What might you do differently?

In what ways might the definition of knowledge and literacy change based on what Google has provided to every student?

Recommended Reading:

Literacy in the 21st Century

Why My Gym Is The Future of Education

The Questions We Choose To Ask and Answer: The Open Model of Education

The Future of Education

The Future of Education: Send the Lecture Home

The Literacy of Social Networking

Following up on my posts about social technologies and the need for students to have the literacy skills to be capable to effectively navigate and participate in this web based ecosystem comes this excellent post Slouching Towards Intertwingularity, from Stephen Collins at acidlabs blog.

"But really, if we take a long, hard gaze into Alice’s looking glass, what we see is neither a meadow full of flowers nor a dark wood full of impending danger. What we do see is a tool, perhaps more powerful than we have ever had before, for connecting people and leveraging the almost infinite power of those connections. . The power of, as my friend Mark Pesce puts it, hyperconnectivity.

"Let’s first wind the clock back a little for some perspective. Just five years ago, most of the social networking tools I rely on in my business today didn’t even exist - LinkedIn, Facebook, Flickr, Youtube, Twitter, Dopplr, Slideshare. Just five years ago, pretty much all I had was web browsing and email.

"Now, the web and email were pretty powerful tools, but not nearly as powerful as the social networking tools I now use all day, every day. One of the very greatest benefits these new tools have afforded me is to be able to connect with a vastly greater number of people who think like me, do work like me, like the same things I like, than I ever could before. The thing is now, that group I connect to - that I used to have to attend a monthly meeting of eight or a dozen of the same people every time and ultimately get bored by… That group is now spread over the entire planet. Despite that geographic dispersion, I get the distinct privilege (and frankly, enjoyment) of working, collaborating and just gossiping with them every day of the week using social networking tools like Twitter.

"Humans, ever since the earliest of us could communicate with each other, have banded together in social networks. It’s not a new phenomenon by any means. But now we have, literally at our fingertips, a network that truly makes our village global. With no more difficulty than stepping next door to my neighbor’s house, I can connect with people that share interests with me - professional or personal - no matter where they are in the world. And I do."

This is a 21st Century literacy issue. We need to start thinking about how we will best address it and in what ways we can prepare and equip our students to succeed in this environment.

Take a look at this great presentation...

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Recommended Reading:

Literacy Ladder: Learning on the Social Technographic Ladder

The New Literacy Ladder: Clay Shirky's -- Here Comes Everybody

Literacy Ladder: Learning on the Social Technographic Ladder

The ladder. Charlene Li and Josh Bernofff have written a great book titled Groundswell: winning in a world transformed by social technologies. In their book they describe The Social Technographics ladder.

“Each step on the ladder represents a group of consumers more involved in the groundswell than the previous steps. To join the group on a step, a consumer need only participate in one of the listed activities at least monthly.” I believe that each rung of the Social Technographic ladder present a unique literacy challenge for our students.

Top Rung: Creators
These are the people who, at least once a month, publish a blog, put an article online, maintain a website, or upload music or videos. In the United States, about 18% of us on are the top rung or creators.

The percentage is only going to go up. So, what are we doing to prepare our students to be creators? How are we preparing our students to occupy the “top rung” of the Social Technographics ladder?

If you think about it, this is a question of literacy. For example, here are the writing standards for 6th grade in California: 

Narrative
^{write narratives, that(1) establish and develop plot and setting, and choose a point of view that is appropriate to stories
(2) include sensory details and concrete language to develop plot and character
(3) use a range of narrative strategies (e.g., dialogue, suspense)
Expository
Write expository compositions (e.g., description, explanation, comparison and contrast, and/or problem/solution) that
(1) state the thesis or purpose
(2) explain the situation
(3) follow an organizational pattern appropriate to the type of composition (e.g., if problem/solution, then paired)
(4) offer persuasive evidence for the validity of the description, proposed solutions, etc.
Research Reports
Write research reports that
(1) pose relevant questions narrow enough to be thoroughly covered
(2) support the main idea(s) with facts, details, examples, and explanations from multiple authoritative sources (e.g., speakers, periodicals, on-line information searches)
(3) use a bibliography
Persuasive
2.5. write persuasive compositions (or letters for grade 5) that
(1) state a clear position in support of a proposition or proposal
(2) support the position with organized and relevant evidence; and (3) anticipate and address reader concerns and counter-arguments}

The standards seem to say that we want students to be creators. The question I have is; are we preparing our students to occupy the top rung in the groundswell. Remember, the groundswell is: “A social trend in which people use technologies to get the things they need from each other, rather than from traditional institutions like corporations.”

In other words, the groundswell is what is taking place in this new ecosystem called the web where any person, in any place, can be a producer of media. Or, as Clay Shirky says, every person is a one-man media outlet.

So why only 18% participation?  Obviously this is an optional activity. Nobody has to be a creator. In our classrooms we required that our students be creators. We want all of our students on the top rung. We ask that our students create stories, research reports, projects, and narratives. We are teaching the next generation to succeed in this new online ecosystem. The standards seem to suggest we have the right intentions, but do those standards prepare our students for life in the groundswell. I think it depends on the teacher. The greater the teachers understanding of the power of the groundswell in the online ecosystem, the better the assignments will utilize the standards to prepare the students.

The next rung down: Critics
Critics react to what has been created. This is similar to the responding to literature standard.
_{Response to Literature
Write responses to literature that
(1) develop an interpretation which exhibits careful reading, understanding and insight
(2) organize the interpretation around several clear ideas, premises, or images
(3) develop and justify the interpretation through sustained use of examples and textual evidence}

Again, the question becomes, are we properly preparing our students for being a critic in the groundswell. When I was a student, I was never allowed to comment on what other students wrote. Even in college, my job was to create. The only opportunities I had to be a critic was in writing a book report. Most of us are simply not used to commenting on blogs. We were not trained to do it as students and we had so few opportunities in our academic lives to practice it. But, our students are growing up in the online ecosystem that allows them to comment and critique nearly everything. The can comment on a song, a video, place a comment on a blog, put a book review on Amazon, review a product epinions or CNET. Their world is the world of the critic. Are we as educators equipping them to succeed in this world?  Are we preparing them for life on the second rung? What opportunities do your students have to critique what others have created?

The next rung down: Collectors
Collector collect RSS feeds, save website to Del.icio.us, vote for sites on Digg, and accumulate all forms of created digital media from the online world.

So, what standards address that? How are we preparing our students to be effective collectors of information? What opportunities do our students get to practice the art of selective information collection? How do our students learn to filter information for their select needs? How are we preparing our students to be literate collectors?

The next rung down: Joiners
Members of Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, Orcut, etc. are all joiners. These are the people who maintain profiles on social networking sites. My guess is that most of our students are far ahead of most of their teachers in this aspect. But, how can we teach our students the skills necessary to properly maintain these sites for optimal effect and leverage their power to further themselves via networking?

Our students are natural collaborators and net-workers, but how are we making them literate in the power of networks?

The next rung down: Spectators
Spectators consume what the rest produce. This is the largest part of the groundswell. This is about making choices. What they choose to consume can enhance our students’ education.  So, our students need to make choices that will enhance them as people, as students, as informed citizens, etc. Of course kids will always choose the strange and offbeat, but we can equip them to understand what sorts of media are important for them to consume. What opportunities are your students getting to be selective literate spectators?

The bottom rung: Inactives
These are the people who are not impacted by the groundswell at all. For our students, it might those students who have no access to technology and the web. I still meet students and parents who have no web access. If the school isn’t providing it, and they have no access at home, when are these students given chances to move from inactive to spectator, joiner, collector, critic, or creator?  We need to think about how we can provide opportunities or resources for them to climb the Social Technographic ladder. It is a literacy issue for life in the 21st century.

Catalytic Questions:

In what ways do our current literacy standards meet or fall short of the issues and challenges faced by our students at each rung of the Social Technographic ladder?

In what way can we better prepare our students to be literate creators of information?

How might this look in a classroom?

In what ways can we provide opportunities for our students to be literate critics of created information?

In what ways can we prepare our students to be literate collectors of information?

What might this look like in the classroom?

How might we prepare our students to leverage the power of networks?

In what ways could we prepare our students to make literate choices about the networks they join and the information they place on those networks?

In what was are we preparing our students to be literate spectators of information?

How might we better equip our students to make excellent choices in the information they consume each day?

In what ways can we provide resources or tools to move the non-participating Inactive up the Social Technographic ladder?

Recommended Reading:

The New Literacy Ladder: Clay Shirky's -- Here Comes Everybody

The Groundswell and Your Educational Brand Management

Study: Social networks give kids 21st Century skills

Web 2.0 Is Not The Future of Education--Learning Is!

"Learning is the future of education."

That is the first line from and excellent post by Jen on the @ingenuity blog. Please take a moment to read the post.
Web 2.0 is Not the Future of Education

This is my comment:

“Learning is the future of education.” So simple, so direct, so accurate, and so right on. We can all learn. It doesn’t take a computer, Web 2.0, or any other “technology” for people to learn. People learn all over the world without these technologies. Now, while I am a huge proponent of technology and feel we are obligated to prepare our students for a world infused with technology, lack of technology does not, and should not prevent learning.

My students have been fortunate to experience artists, dancers, actors, musicians, etc; all of whom taught them amazing things without technology. P.E and sports coaches have engaged, inspired, and taught my students much.

A great story told by a grandmother visiting a classroom is just as engaging as some Web 2.0 gizmo. Both are valuable and both should be embraced.

The point is the “learning.” You said it best. “Learning is the future of education.” Amen.

Teachers, Your Personal Brand Management Is On The Line

After following the conversation over at The Thinking Stick and 2¢ Worth, it got me to thinking. The Internet and new information technologies have radically changed the ways and the speed with which information, data, perceptions, and opinions about you, your school, or your district can be spread. Today, you have a personal brand.

Today, parents and students share their thoughts about teachers mostly through word of mouth. But that is changing. Technology is changing it. The reputation of teachers, the perceptions or opinions of teachers, are becoming public shared via Web 2.0 technologies. Nowadays, there is no limit to how many people (students, parents, community members, and other teachers) can communicate via the Internet.

I imagine a conversation between a parent and principal in the near future might look like this…

Parent: “I would like my student in _________ class.”

Principal: “All of the teachers at _________ are excellent, why this teacher?”

Parent: “I looked at the teachers website and saw examples of past assignments and projects. I looked at the teacher’s latest test scores via the state department of education data/information website and like what I saw. I checked the district website and found the latest professional development the teacher just participated is suited for my students needs. I ran the teacher’s name through Google and Wikipedia and didn’t find anything that troubled me.

“Further, I checked the teacher’s Facebook site and ran their name through RateMyTeacher.com and was impressed with their reviews. I listened to several of the Podcasts created in the their class and viewed some of the digital projects created by students in their class. I appreciate their style and the type of learning going on. Finally, I asked for opinions about the teacher on a few community blogs and was impressed with some of the feedback I received. So based on this teacher’s public profile, I would like my student in their class.”

Principal: “Umm, wow! Can you go over that with me one more time?”

The availability of information and the increasing use of multiple communication technologies is going to create a day when and teacher is a “brand.”  The way the teacher teachers, the techniques used in the classroom, the types of assignments given, the use or non-use of technology, student test scores, professional development received, degrees or certificates earned, and opinions and perceptions from others posted to the Internet will create a profile of a teacher. That profile of the teacher is, for all intents and purposes, that teacher’s brand.

Teachers will have to manage their brand just as any other company would want to manage their personal brand. Their methods, their style, personality, strategies, use of technology, test scores, etc. will combine to make your personal brand. And believe me, your personal brand is going to be discussed, shared, and examined via the Internet. RateMyTeacher is just the beginning.

Digitization is going to allow student work and assignments to be put on the Internet, creating a digital portfolio or footprint that will follow you. It is not a stretch to imagine, that as state, county, or district data/information management will allow the public to see your students test scores, professional development hours, credentials and certificates, etc. all of which will allow the public to see more of your personal brand. Transparency is here!

Maybe you should get a new head shot. You want to look your best! Sanders Says, "If not, how can you build a personal brand? Your picture is more memorable than your bio. Maybe that’s what people mean when they say that “a picture is worth a thousand words.”

Catalytic Questions:

What do you think your personal brand is?

How will educators manage their personal brands?

How might we encourage schools and educators to begin thinking about managing their brands?

Will books and courses on marketing and brand management become essential tools and knowledge for educators?

What other types of data or information will be part of an educator’s personal brand?

 Ideas:
Jeff Utecht offers some advice:

1. High Schools especially should start by creating a group on Facebook that they can control the content      on. Then invite their students to join.

2. Search Often: Schools should run searches on all major search engines to know what people will find       when they are looking for your school.
   Using RSS feeds from sites such as Wikipedia allows a school to track changes on their school’s page.
   Know your audience: Signing up for a simple tracking program like Google Analytics and install it on        the school’s home page.
   Understand Students: Understand students today. Be connected to them, listen to them, where are they    at online? What are they talking about? Where should the school be?
    
Suggested Reading:

Jeff Utecht

David Warlick

Tim Sanders

The Age of Relationships: What Will You Have To Learn? What Will You Have To Unlearn?

Nobody reads my blog. Well, that is not entirely true, but most never leave a comment. On his great blog The Thinking Stick, Jeff Utecht posted about why people don’t leave comments on the blogs they read (Where are the comments?)

I of course, left a comment.

Jeff, your previous post about participating in Web 2.0 and the accompanying diagram provide some meaningful ideas.

As Gary Hayes said, “… that participation in society, politics, online social networks etc: is not either on or off it is a continuum of degrees of influence.”

Many more people fall on the continuum of consumer as opposed to commenter.

Having not have grown up with the ability to comment instantly on what we read, view, or hear, we are simply not used to doing it. In school, we never got to comment on or share what other student wrote or created. We simply created and that was it. Hand your work in, the teacher will make comments, not you.

Maybe we are just selfish. A comment signifies you have more insight than I. Your ideas are somehow more worthy than mine. Why should I help you?

Maybe we are just lazy!

But this got me thinking about something I read in Peter Sheahan’s book Flip. Peter believes that we are leaving the age of the knowledge worker and entering the age of relationships.

So just as we are coming to grips with the fact that we live in a flat world and knowledge workers is the area the education should be focused on developing, we come to find that even the knowledge itself is a commodity that can be outsourced overseas. In it’s place it the ability to create and trust and build relationships that will be the competitive advantage and need we should begin preparing our students for.

Peter says, “Being a knowledge worker is not going to offer competitive advantage in and of itself…In the years ahead, two things will count the most. The first is your ability to unlearn the things that are losing relevance, to flip yourself free of old scripts, and to learn the things that are gaining relevance. The second is whether people come to know and trust you as they struggle to bring their own learning forwards. That is do you really care about and respect them?”

So I ask what things are our students learning today that they will have to unlearn to be successful in the flat world of tomorrow?

Also, what sorts of skills and experiences must we provide for our students so that they are able to build relationships?

What are the tools of the relationship era? Blogs, wikis, podcasts, Twitter, Skype, YouTube, Wikipedia, Google Earth, Flickr, Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, and many other Web 2.0 technologies are certainly all examples of tools of the relationship age. How many teachers or principals are “literate” in these tools and technologies?  How many of our students are? 

Are we asking the right questions? What is literacy in the relationship era? What does educated look like in the relationship era? What will our students need to be able to do?

Peter says, “If you are betting instead on a lifetime of learning and unlearning, and of leveraging relationships with valued customers and clients, you should be confident of your ability to make your way.”

So, coming back to Jeff’s post. Wouldn’t posting comments on blogs we love or find interesting be a useful skill in the relationship era?

But then again I could be wrong. How else could we are still banning cell phones, blogs, and YouTube from our schools. So where is the real job preparation happening. In the school from 8 to 3, or in the Web 2.0 technology rich lives of our students outside of the classroom.

Speaking of Web 2.0, take a look at this YouTube video.

Big Word Project: The Intersection of Education and the New Approach to Meaning

These words are mine. I bought them. Let me explain. I came across the Big Word Project from one of my favorite blogs Ugly Doggy. It is an interesting idea dreamt up by two creative thinkers in Northern Ireland. Their idea was to let people redefine a word by linking it to a particular website.

I chose Intersection and approach because for me they represent the philosophy of this blog. It is an intersection of many ideas and education. It is also about having a different approach to what we do in education. (Innovation and Education were already taken!) Ugly Doggy conducted an interview with the creators.

Here is one of the interview questions and answers...

Are the words pre-approved (you have a list and what is not there can't be used) and therefore finite? Or ANYTHING that is in a dictionary can go there?
- Lee: Not at all, anything that's a real word can be used. We're using the Oxford English Dictionary as reference. We have about 180,000 words on the site but we're missing loads so feel free to suggest more. We're not including places or names (unless the name is in the dictionary).

This got me thinking about its relation to education. If a word can take on multiple meanings and even take on locations on the world wide web, then what else could a word be connected with? A word could be connected with a picture, a sound, a smell, a country, a person, a movie, a song, a poem. If you think about it, this has some pretty powerful implications for education. We are moving from a "there is one right definition of a word" to a "a word can mean multiple things and those things will be specific to each individual." Word and meaning will take on many more meanings and concepts, and those can be individualized from a country, a culture, a group, or an individual.

One right answer for the question "What does approach mean?" or "What does Intersection mean?" is evaporating into links and tags meaning, unique to every person. This is getting very interesting.

The Four Forces of Change: Increasing Complexity

“Increasing compression of time and space produces increasing complexity.” Increasing Complexity is the second of the four forces of change impacting on us, as described by Peter Sheahan in his book Flip.

There are six factors driving increasing complexity.

1. Rapidly interconnecting networks of ideas and people.

“Did you know, for example, that 20 to 25 percent of daily searches on Google are unique? We are generating content—opinions, survey results, perspectives, ideas, or just pointless garbage—so fast at any one time more than one quarter of the World Wide Web is brand new.”

We are going to have to develop standards and practices to teach our students how to navigate through all this information, make informed and appropriate choices, and judge content for usefulness, bias, authority, etc. We will certainly do our students a disservice and our country a disservice if we don’t provide our students with the skills and knowledge to navigate through this environment. It is not a skill most of us needed as we grew up. One trip to the library or flipping through the World Book Encyclopedia was enough.

Times have changed and we need to adapt to ensure we are meeting our students’ needs.
According to Time magazine, the world produced 161 exabytes. That equals 161 billion gigabytes. Imagine that. In other words, the world produced three million times the amount of information contained in all the books ever written in one year. Understanding how to type a search into Google is not providing our students with the tools they need to succeed in the future.

2. Disruptive technology—innovations in product and process almost always have unintended consequences that challenge our ability to adapt, and reward those with flexibility to flip into new modes of acting and thinking.

Cell phones with built in cameras and texting capabilities are nice features, but of course our students use them to cheat. That is the law of unintended consequences. Social Web 2.0 technology is a wonderful tool that connects students, but then we fight against cyber-bulling and Internet stalkers. As technology is rapidly developed and adopted by our students, we are going to face the challenge of adapting to the consequences they bring to our schools and classrooms.

3. Explosion of choice—in a globalizing economy, no one has a monopoly on any product or service for long, and the consumer’s biggest problem is often choosing among apparently identical offerings.

Teachers and administrators are faced with increasing choices in curriculum, teaching materials, educational software, and technology. Being able to sort through all these choices requires an enormous amount of time, energy, and use of resources. Teachers and administrators are being asked to be savvy enough to make informed and fiscally sound decisions in an environment where the amount of choices is growing daily. 

4. Increasing intangible desires of the market—rising affluence shifts the business imperative from supplying customer needs to meeting customer desires for emotional fulfillment, no matter how mundane the product or service.

The increasing  desire for school choice and schools that specialize in the arts, science, or technology is all a part of fulfilling customer needs. This will only increase in the future.

5. Increased sophistication of technology, systems, and processes—complexity begets complexity.

For example, many schools purchase educational software that becomes obsolete in just a few years or is not functional on quickly aging computers.  The effectiveness of the technology becomes more difficult to measure as we struggle to integrate it into our literacy plans while managing all of the technical issues.  Should you go web-base or buy a server? What is the long-term service agreement? What about software updates? Is this something teachers or administrators should be forced to spend time working through?

6. Legislation—whether it’s financial transparency, safety, the environment, or human rights, the world’s governments are regulating it.

No Child Left Behind, Quality Education Investment Act, High Priority Schools Grant Program, etc, etc. Need I say more? We have binders full of legislation monitoring everything we do. Make a mistake, and have it printed in the papers or posted on the web for the world to see.

As you can see, we in education are facing the same extreme forces that businesses and organizations around the world face. The challenge will be to adapt quickly and successfully. It is going to take some creative and innovative thinking, because what we have done so far, will not take us past where we need to go. One thing is for sure, it's going to get more complex.

The Four Forces of Change: Compression of Time and Space

The forces of change are acting on us. We may not sense it or we may feel it intensely, but change is coming. The forces of change are acting everyday to influence what we do and how we do it.

Peter Sheahan has identified The Four Forces of Change in his new book Flip: How to Turn Everything You Know on Its Head—and Succeed Beyond Your Wildest Imaginings.

The Four Forces of Change, according to Peter Sheahan, are:
1.    Increasing compression of time and space
2.    Increasing complexity
3.    Increasing transparency and complexity
4.    Increasing expectations on the part of everyone for everything.

Let’s take a look at the first of the four forces, Increasing compression of time and space.

Sheahan writes, “Human beings have always been impatient. Today we expect things to happen faster than ever before. And not just a little bit faster, but over the last few years a lot faster. The quicker something can be something can be done, the quicker we expect it to happen…”

Education is certainly not immune. Think about the compression of time. How many emails do you get a day? People who expect a response the same day sent most of those messages. Data can be pulled up in an instant with databases such as Edusoft or Data Director. New education programs are created yearly and teachers are expected to learn them and put them into place quickly. Requests for information are made frequently and the expectation is that they be returned quickly.

“In summary, increased affluence and rapidly developing  communications technology are compressing  our expectation around time. If the late twentieth century was about doing more with less, then the twenty-first century will be about doing more with less, faster!”

No teacher would argue that the increasing demands of high stakes testing and legislation such as NCLB is driving them to get more teaching squeezed into the same amount of days. Education is going to have to adapt to the compression of time as we asked to do more in the same space of time.

Technology in education is subject to the forces of compressing time. Technology is being developed faster than ever, being adopted by society quicker than ever, which means educators will be expected to integrate new technologies into their classrooms and curriculum sooner than ever.

The compression of space will impact education as well. As the world gets “smaller” we are going to have more opportunities to interact with people from all over the world, whether in person or through technology. This may create more opportunities for our students to learn from those who are live in or have direct knowledge about the subjects our students are learning. Imagine learning about the pyramids of Egypt from the scholars who there everyday or learning about life in Egypt from the people who live there. Virtual field trips and collaboration across the world via technology are a result of compressed space and distance.

As we get “closer” to those we share the planet with, we may view our educational standards in comparison to other countries. Eventually, we will be in competition with many more people for the knowledge work that is so highly sought after. The compression of distance may require that we examine our educational standards in light of what others around the world are doing and what a world where distance and time are compressed. Tom Peters summed it up best when he said, “Distance is dead.”

Could Schools Benefit From Having A School Blog?

Could schools benefit from having a school blog. Well, it depends on the purpose of the blog. I am sure many school may have already developed school blogs for differing reasons. Off the top of my head you could have a blog for discussing macro academic issues, attendance, P.T.A., parent involvement, and more.

Business is having this conversation right now. Kristin Edelhauser posted this post To Blog Or Not To Blog at Entrepreneur.com.

Does your company need a chief blogger? That's the question being asked by this Advertising Age article. Now that the novelty of corporate blogging has passed, blogs are being viewed as a branding voice. Companies like Coca-Cola, Marriott and Kodak have all hired chief bloggers to engage customers and share their stories.

But, as the article points out, a blog voice isn't necessarily right for every brand. Analysts say that companies that want to blog should first identify the reason they want to do so. "They really need to start with reading, following their customers, commenting on communities. Then think about creating something," says Sean Howard, director of strategy and innovation at Lift Communications and blogger for CrapHammer.com.

According to Geoff Livingston, CEO of Livingston Communications and blogger for Buzz Bin, companies need to look beyond the blog. "What [companies] need to focus on are the principles behind social media that make it work, like participating in a larger community works, and not controlling the conversation works," Livingston says.

A blog offers a way to engage the greater community in discussion of importance. A school could have a need and an audience for just such a conversation. It is definitely a question that is going to be asked more often by schools in the future and Web 2.0 technologies become even more interwoven into the communities schools serve.