Windows of the Future: Rethinking Learning for the New Digital Landscape

Notes from a presentation by Ian Jukes on June 7, 2005 for the Texas Technology Leadership Academy celebratory banquet.  

Overview of TASA-led Texas Technology Leadership Academy

4,247 administrators were trained in 4 year project

Intro of Ian Jukes

T for technology / traveler
L for learning / leading
C for challenge and Canadien

Windows of the Future: Rethinking Learning for the New Digital Landscape

going to talk 100-120 words per minute

At end of presentation: you can download 100 page handout of this session
– updated at 5 am this morning

Let’s talk about change
– there are some dramatic things happening in the world: look at the news / current events: war on terror, economy, politics, etc.

Even tho there are some dramatic things happening in the world: the issues we have to deal with in education are the subtle issues
– change is subtle, sneaky
– it is really hard to put your finger on exactly what is changing

His son Kyler: pictures of him
– hard to believe

whether we are talking about change in kids, society, world, etc
– issues are subtle, sneaky
– it is hard for us to understand what is going on
– the scale and scope of the changes we are dealing with are not just: let’s change once
– we are talking about constant and never-ending change

Question of tonight: Why is this happening?
– reason: we live today in an exponential world
– lots of people do not understand exponentializm

Hypothetical story about Texas
– imagine you work in a school that is overcrowded
– so finally the decision was made to build an addition to the high school
– contractors say $3 million
– deal Ian offers: 1? for first day, doubling by the end of the month
– the power of doubling

Problem: when you are dealing with exponentialism: it just keeps doubling
– the change never takes a snow day / break
– in only the last few days that

Malcom Gladwell calls this type of thing “the tipping point”
– change goes from being linear, predictable, to being mindblowingly out of control

Most of our predictions about the future are going to turn out to be very wrong
– because the
– the nature of exponentialism

5 exponential trends / change forces that no one in this nation can choose to ignore

1- Moore’s Law
– now retired, estimated to be the 13th wealthiest man in the world
– Cray XMP 10 years ago was room-sized computer
– in 2005 you couldn’t run Windows NT on Cray XMP

Graphs of Moore’s Law
– The same system would have been 500K that was 5K in 1979

In 86 Moore wrote another article, said the trend is happening so quickly, not doubling every 24 months, it is doubling every 18 months
– in 1986

Trend: estimated in America today that 70% of computer
– 40% of them start at under $400

we cannot view any piece of technology outside of the continuum of where it has come from and where it is going to go

Back to Gordon Moore
– interviewed in March 2005
– asked about future of Moore’s law
– what he said: just based on scientific principles that uphold Moore’s law, there is no indication that the exponential doubling of Moore’s law isn’t going to continue for another 15-20 months

IBM and HP analysis of molecular electronics: they project Moore’s law continuing for at least 50 years
– when you extrapolate this out, the future is unbelievable

I am not so concerned for us
– I am more concerned for the children who entered kindergarten

What kind of technology will be common to us and to them

extrapolate to:
– year: 2017
– 104,032 MB
– 12,191 GB hard drive
– speed: 650,199 mhz
– cost: $9

When I can’t believe
– 1974 I paid $195 for my first calculator: add, subtract, multiply and divide
– saw a solar powered calculator for 20?

Now Moore’s law seems to be doubling every 12 months (based on IBM and HP

If you want to rea
– read “The Age of Spiritual Machines” by Ray Kirchwhiler
– “the singularity is near”
– it says quantum-based computing, nano-tech is going to increase computing power by millionths

We can’t view anything outside our live

We lead children out of the intellectual wilderness
– we need to think about things differently

Moore’s law: factor of 4 every 12 months
– implications for profession, for personal lives?

law of diminishing astonishment is what those who haven’t learned something in the past 10 minutes are suffering from

The trend of Moore’s law by itself is conceptual dynamite

Chip technology of Moore’s law has led to a 2nd exponential trend
– during same time, this has led to PHOTONICS

How fast is fast?
– think about having a 1200 baud modem, and going to 14.4 or 56K modem
– now we are
– can download in excess of 10 megabits per second (that is the contents of a CD-ROM in 60 seconds)
– that is equivalent to a secretary typing 8 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year for 12 years
– now with fiber you can download 3 CD-ROMs per second
– that is like taking everything that Shakespeare has written: translating that into 200 languages and sending it across the Atlantic ocenan to 34 ten thousands of a second
– now 1900 CD-ROMs per second, with fiber optic cables

There are over 1800 strands of fiber everywhere

Read George Gilder “Telecausal” – predications about bandwidth needs
– Bandwidth speed has been tripling every 12 months, now it is every 6 months
– Gilder says based on the principles of photonics: this is going to continue for at least another 20 years
– in 20 years we will have bandwidth speeds a billion times faster than we have today
– so today we are in the stone age of photonics

Now wireless is taking off
– FTC has just approved patents in Wi-Max, close to fiber speed through the air, even when driving in a car 60 mph
– where is this leading?

The Internet is going to be everywhere
– you are going to be online everywhere
– this going to lead to an exposion of new technology services that are beyond our imaginatioins

In US we are dealing with outsourcing and global economy
– now kids are directly competing with folks across the globe
– if we live in a global economy, does the idea of anytime / anywhere

so does this change in any way the skills that students are going to need for today and tomorrow
– what are they going to need to know and do to succeed?

What are we in education doing to prepare them for this world?
– no child left untested?
– no superintendent left unemployed?

are we going to just pretend that we have addressed these issues?

What implications does bandwidth tripling every 6 months have for education?

My job is not to educate you: it is to irritate you, challenge you, provoke you
– give you a quick kick in the assumptions
– get you to try and understand where this stuff is going

Moore’s law actually goes way back in history
– ripple effect was photonics

Moore’s law and photonics have lead to THE INTERNET
– When did “the internet” happen
– Aug 23, 1995 it happened for me
– that is the date someone who showed Ian the program “Mosaic”
– from propellerheads to something that is embedded in the public consciousness and taken for granted (point and click)

1993: there were less than 100 users of WWW (world wide web)
890 million in 170 countries now are using the web (15% of world’s population)
– estimated there will be 1 billion regular users of web by the end of the year
– we have added tons of new users, messages, webpages
– in last 30 days, 7 out of 10 Americans have gone online
– estimated conservatively, in terms of webpages: it is doubling exponentially 3 times per year
– more than 80% of webpages that will exist in year then do not exist now

Even tho Internet has been around for most of us for less than 10 years
– this has led to an almost unfathomable situation, where we

What does the future hold for tomorrow
– Nokia’s new gadget: n-Gage
– in center has high resolution color screen for kids eyes, built in web browser, wireless for web and email, plays video games, FM radio, kareoke, digital camera, has home cash machine, also has GPS built in
– within a year this will replace an ATM machine
– you will be able to download
– this is about $200 now
– Samsung’s SGHP207 phone: soon will become man and woman’s best friend: will replace keys, wallat
— has CVR : continuous voice recognition: after training for 3 hours, it will have 95% voice to speech
— will also soon allow realtime language translation
— now this is under $100

Question: with devices like this appearing now, where is Internet usage in the US going to go: up, down, same? or absolutely rocket through the roof?

The web is going to be technically unrecognizable
– pretty soon we will be able to put on virtual reality goggles
– refusing to use the web will become like refusing to use an automobile or a refrigerator

Question: why is this happening?
– Internet is a business, education, commmunication system all in one place (convergence)

His son mentioned recently (complaining bitterly) it took 15 min for him to register for his classes online from his bedroom (last spring)

This is the death of patience
– like TV and telephone of 20th century together
– this is like a 10.5 on the Richter scale of significance

It is almost impossible to overstate the significance of the internet in our lives

Questions
– use email?
– use IM?

Jupiter research shows 71% of consumers 13-17 regularly use IM on the computer, 53% regularly use text messaging
– for younger generation, IM and text messaging is preferred method of communication over email (which is preferred over
– do your kids communicate differently with IM? yes, of course!

Increasingly, IM and text messaging is
– what do you and kids read online? essays, poems,

What are people looking at online: summaries, charts, graphics, etc.

Is reading news, summaries, charts, etc the same or different than
– it is a cognatively different process
– it is called technical reading, and it uses different neurons in the brain
– given that kids are as comfortable reading from handheld device as we are from a book, what have we done to revamp the language arts curriculum?

What kids choose to read now has implications for literacy
– what are the implications of the Internet for instructional delivery

Liz’s 8 year old daughter is playing chess on the Internet against other people

These 3 trends

1 out of 10 kids in America 10 years ago were taught outside the public schools
– now the ratio is 1 in 4 (includes home schooling and private schools)
– these trends are absolutely unbelievable

We are seeing intersection / convergence
– these 3 trends have led to biggest threat to public education that we could imagine:

4TH TREND: INFOWHELM
– we live in the age of disposible information
– we can get info about whatever we want

– google has copied and archived over 3.2 billion pages
– now Google print
– have digitized 60 million books, searchable

this is just the beginning
– get Ian’s paper: from Gutenburg to Gates

What does infowhelm mean?
– Gilder’s book “Telecosm”
– if we could take sum of recorded knowledge from dawn of time to 1995 as ball of twine
– from 1995 to 2005, because of Moore’s law and photonics: that ball of twine would have increased in size 20 times
– every 24 months info is doubling (unique new technical info)
– in 13 years: amount of technical info is increasing by 256 times

By 2007, it will be doubling every 2 weeks
– by 2012 it will be doubling every 72 hours
– this is leading to a fundamental depreciation in the value of technical information

So now if you take a high school graduate in a 4 year technical college, half of what they learn in their 1st year will be worthless in 3rd year
– in 2 years, half of info is no longer relevant
– for doctor: it is 10 months
– this means half a day of work per week to stay on top of things

What is your own personal rate of knowledge depreciation
– from a laptop, cell phone, students have access to every library,
– more relevant: to friends, cheat sheets, more than 30,000 online clubs designed by and for kids

Does this have any implications for the way content can be provided for students?
– implications for who, what, how, and why of learning?

Are we systematically providing kids and teachers with the information processing skills they will need to deal with infowhelm?
– are we just continuing busiiness as usual

STUDENTS NEED INFORMATION FLUENCY SKILLS in same ways we teach math and langauge skills
– now we need to discuss infowhelm with others at our table

We have discussed 4 of 7 trends
– we will not talk about biotech and nanotech tonight

Our trends we’ve discussed tonight
– Moore’s law
– Law of the Photon
– The Internet
– InfoWhelm

After you understand these GLOBAL, EXPONENTIAL TRENDS
– kids today are different
– not just in terms of clothes they wear, music, etc
– not just how they act,
– kids today seem to have more body parts today than we used to

Because of digital bombardment
– according to recent study, kids 8-18 are spending on average 10 hours per day with digital technology (multitasking as digital natives) – we speak DSL (digital as second language)
– brains are changing physically and chemically
– even tho we don’t yet understand the complex processes involved in teaching and learning, it is important for us to look at what we know

We used to think the brain development was stable and cells started to die off
– long standing assumption was we had what we got: you were stuck with what you were born with
– we believed we used the same neural pathways to process and utilize information
– assumption was that we all learned the same way
– many of these beliefs in brain research have shown that the brain is constantly reorganizing itself based on intensity and duration of experiences

This shows you can regrow neurons, change brain capacity: therefore intelligence is NOT fixed
– this has huge educational implications
– this is called NEURO-PLASTICITY

contrary to longstanding assumptions, the brain is constantly creating new thinking patterns
– caveat here: it does not happen sponetaneously
– requires several hours a day, 7 days a week
– learning to read and write, requires several hours per day, multiple days per week
– watching TV for multiple hours per day, 7 hours per week reprograms the brain too

Since 1974 arrival of pong, 1976 it was superpong
– now Grand Theft Auto, Sim city, etc
– multiple hours per day, every day
– 3/4 of teenagers play video games on handheld devices several times per week
– even among youngest children: random access multitasking, exposure to these digital experiences is rewiring our children
– this means digital kids process

Human brain project ongoing since 19096
– new field of study: neuro-infomatics (analysis of brain processes using brain scanning and computational powers of computers)
– for first time, using these powerful brain scanners (FMRIs) we can non-invasively examine real working brains
– view in 3D what types of the brain are being used during specific mental processes
– this allows researchers to pinpoint within a few millimeters the actual parts of the brain that light up
– help scientists understand how different parts of the brain interact
– as a result of these developments; we have learned more in the past 3 years about how the brain works than what we learned in the past 100 years

If you were to compare FMRI scan of our parent’s brains to ours, you see different neural pathways
– kids today process same info using fundamentally different nerual pathways
– we esp see this in the visual cortex
– kids today have visual cortex 30%
– according to Eric Jenson: 87% of kids in a given classroom are not auditory learners, they are visual or visual/kinesthetic learners

we are now seeing an accelerated gap between the younger generations
– Jane Healy was right
– this helps explain how kids are different, how they view the world differently

Even tho we understand a lot of this, almost none of what we have learned about this has been applied in our classrooms

Phil Schlecty wrote “Shaking Up the Schoolhouse”

It has long been understood that talking to and at people is not effective
– we now understand that for information to be remembered, it must be moved from short term memory to long term memory

This requires 4 things
1- new info must make a connection to existing knowledge (otherwise it just stays in working memory for a few seconds)
— if it is not meaningful
— we discard 98% of what comes into our brain (like being introduced to someone and then you immediately forget about it)
— differnce between rote and meaningful learning

2- previous knowledge and experiences determine how when and why kids learn
– 15 year old stepson, incredible writer and musician
– chronic C- student
– says most of school just doesn’t interest him
– took Ian to online mini-golf, all based on concepts of geometry
– this is a kid very lousy at theoretical geometry but is very good at real-life applications
– Howard Gardner has talked about this for years: learning is personal: it must be relevant to the learner, otherwise it will be quickly discarded

3- learners must be given repeated, differentiated opportunities to engage with materials (many times, different contexts)
— allows for internalization of ideas

4- students need to be provided with consistent feedback
– gameplayers are positively reinforced every 7 – 12 seconds
– contrast that to positive reinforcement in the traditional classroom
– quality always tells students what they are doing right, and also provides suggestions for improvement

This is reinforced by research out of Michigan (state testing)
– took 100 grade 8 students in traditional (full frontal lecture, worksheets, traditional summative testing)
– then took 100 students and taught with problem-based learning methods: scores were identical

didn’t make a difference if you were taught using traditional
– 1 year later: kids taught with traditional means had just 15% retention, non-traditional taught students had 70% recall

For effective learning to take place there must be:
1- meaning for the learner (context)
2- differentiated learning (relevance)
3- repeated opportunities( practice)
4- meaningful reward (reinforcement)

without these 4 things kids cannot retain meaningful information
– like velcro learners
– common strategy is to make lists: this is what traditional learners to (in a classroom which primarily rewards students with good short-term memories)

Learning pyriamid out of National Trainint Labs, Bethel, Main 2003

– shows continnum from traditional learning (LOTS): showing retention and traditional to brain based learning (HOTS)

we are using standardized tests to measure non-standardized brains
– if you want success on state exams, to exceed NCLB etc, you can’t just lecture at students
– content of

Question
– what implications does this research hold for schools?
– for the way teachers currently do their jobs?
– the way we teach kids?

Whose reality is being reflected in our schools

Alfred North Whitehead: “It’s the business of the future to be dangerousl. The major advances in civiliczation aare processses that all but wredch the socieites in which they occur”

we can be so busy looking into the rear-view mirror that we crash right into the future

Eric Hoffer quote

Jukes opinion: we are doing a great job today preparing our students for 1960

A rubber band has a comfort zone
– even after lots of manipulation, rubber band wants to go back to the way it was
– when the going gets tough, the tough get traditional
– we try to revert back to the way we were

Final question: how do we in education measure up?
– deal with fast paced change? deal with the implications of these trends

I believe this is not about our comfort zone, this is about our children
– our hopes and dreams for our children
– these children right here may be only 20% of the population but there are 1000% of the future of this country

Our pension plans depend on these kids

Ian’s point: we need new schools for a new world
– that will prepare students for their future, not our past
– not for our comfort zone

I work in east LA
– feels like when you enter those schools you should see a sign “Abandon All Hope”
– I get real discouraged
_ I have been tilting with windmills

When I get discouraged there is a place a like to go
– Montery aquarium
– on right hand side of gift shop they were playing a video of blue whale: largest mammal, more stats on size
– a baby blue whale in 1st year of life gains an estimated 60 lbs per hour
– it is so enormous when it needs to turn around, it will take it 3-5 minutes to turn 180 degrees
– there are many in our world today that draw a big parallel

Debate about vouchers is about people who think we are not getting the educational program turned around soon

Then you get to 10 story tank
– if you read Steinbeck, they used to have schools of sardines that were the length / width of city block, mass of thousands of blue whales
– fundamental difference in the way a school of sardines turn around
– it looked like sardines were all swimming in same direction, but there were others swimming in the other direction
— when a critical mass of truly committed sardines were swimming in the other direction, the rest of the school turned and followed

who here is willing to become a committed sardine
– to move your schools and classrooms from where they are, to where they need to be
– this is not going to happen with words and rhetoric: that will not reform our schools
– what will reform
– definition of insanity by Ian Jukes: doing the same thing you’ve always done but expecting/needing different results

How do I finish
– personal challenge to these people here
– you need to be the people who will make the change happen, with parents, teachers: for meaningful change, not just the reform of the week

If you want to talk about someone who had it hard: Helen Keller (blind and mute at age of 15 months)
– despite her profound handicaps, went on to get a PhD, become a professor, write over 30 books
– asked by student what it is like to be blind: the only thing worse than being blind is being able to see and having no vision

The message to take back to your virtual collegues: whether you are ready or not:
– SHIfT happens: we are the paradigm shift

Windows of the Future: 100 pages (PDF), updated this morning
www.ianjukes.com
Digital Kids in the New Digital Landscape (PDF) all about brain stuff
From Gutenberg to Gates to Google & Beyond (PDF)

All 2000 pictures and headlines he was showing are all there, over 100 MB you can download
– 40 handouts are on there
– every week Ian goes through 400-500 articles, posts best 10 articles on his blog
– send out to 18,000 people in multiple
– write him for Committed Sardine Blog, ijukes@mindspring.com
– write to him and say: “I need to become committed”

I am not trying to frighten you, I am trying to empower you

Third recommended handout “From Guttenberg to Gates and beyond…”
– picture of Bill Gates in 1979 in Albuquerque
– have you seen the 2 kids who own Google now, they are on the cusp of

Go read Business Week article 2 weeks ago: “Why Google Scares Gates“

(My reflections and comments on this article are available on my Tools for the TEKS Updates blog.)

– they have beta engine for video search out now:
http://video.google.com/