Tag Archives: future

Jeff Hopkins on the Pacific School of Inquiry and Innovation

Last night I saw this tweet by Jeff Hopkins promoting a new vlog/podcast series ‘School of Thought Victoria‘. Perfect timing since I just finished my most recent audio book and ended up in long drives today. So, I’ve already devoured 3 of the four videos already (I listened, I did not watch,  which is all you need to do since it is a discussion).

So much of what Jeff has shared with Alex Van Tol about the Pacific School of Inquiry and Innovation resonates with me, and what we are working on, and towards, at Inquiry Hub Secondary School. In this series, Jeff is outlining 20 convictions that the school is modeled on. I am looking forward to every one of these conversations.

Here’s what I’ve listened to so far,

Agency:

Inquiry Process:

Learner vs Student:

Subscribe to the channel, and listen to Jeff’s wisdom.

Last school day of 2020

Tomorrow is the first day of Christmas holidays, making today the last school day of the 2020 calendar year.

It seems like ages ago but back in February, I had just finished 2 years of running 3 schools. It was absolutely exhausting and I was, for the first time since becoming an administrator, ready to quit. It was too much. Thankfully my job was adjusted and I knew that I could stay on and feel for the first time in a couple years that I could do my job.

Then the pandemic hit, we went to remote learning, I had some responsibilities to support others added to plate, and I found myself in online meetings for over 4 hours each day. It was overwhelming for everyone, and my crazy schedule continued. It felt like I couldn’t catch a break.

Summer finally came, with the cancellation of a trip to Europe. We still had a good summer, but it was nothing like we had planned.

Since September things have been better at school, with students coming daily, but the stress of the virus is ever present .Things still remained off kilter and very busy. There has been nothing normal about this calendar or school year. Nothing.

I know we aren’t out of the woods yet. It will take several months to get the vaccine out and schools are not the initial priority. But in my head I have been telling myself, ‘Things will get better by January 2022,’ I have been preparing for 2021 to be ‘2020 Part 2 – The Sequel’. I didn’t think we’d see vaccines start to role out until summer, or even September ’21.

So, while hoping for things to go faster, I’ve been preparing for another whole year of this. Seeing the vaccine already out before the end of 2020 has filled me with enthusiasm about how much better than expected 2021 can be.

Yes, we must proceed with caution. No, the pandemic isn’t over… but 2020 feels over. And while I throw a metaphorical middle fingers at the year, I will look back at it over this break and try to find the silver linings this year has brought us. What have we learned? What can we carry forward? What can we value and appreciate more as we slowly head back to normal? I am happy to see the year end with optimism for the future… optimism that I did not expect to have.

Humanity – versus – Reality

I saw a video a few days ago of hundreds of unmasked protesters, packed together in a square in the United Kingdom, singing ‘Stick your poison vaccines up your ass’ to the tune of ‘She’ll Be Coming Round the Mountain When She Comes’. I wanted to write about it sooner, but I could only come from an angle of anger and disgust. It would have been a good rant, that would probably have made me feel better, but I’m done ranting with the purpose of making myself feel better. I’ve been seeking out joy, determination, fun facts, and when dealing with our current situation, humour, as sort of coping mechanisms for dealing with the discord that seems to be pervasive right now.

There is an epic battle going on. It is a battle on many battle grounds. It is a battle happening across the world. It is a battle that pits humanity against reality. Here are six of the battlegrounds:

  1. The Covid-19 Pandemic: Many people are dying – versus – Protests against the preventions and lockdowns to prevent the spread.
  2. Vaccines: They save lives – versus – They are dangerous (or they will be used to monitor and track us).
  3. Climate change: It’s the greatest threat we face as a species – versus – It’s a hoax.
  4. Science: Seeking objective facts – versus – un-objective and agenda-driven propaganda.
  5. Freedom: Government are here to serve and protect us – versus – Governments are corrupt and stripping away our freedoms in an attempt to control us.
  6. Civil liberties: Issues like racism, gender identity, pro-choice, freedom of expression – versus – Religious values, as well as both right-wing (QAnon) and left-wing (Antifa extremists) using hateful tactics to argue their points.

I purposely didn’t use the word ‘Truth’ before now. I believe that we are living in a post-Truth era (with an intentional capital ‘T’).  I’ll leave you with Stuart McMillan’s webcomic about Neil Postman’s book, ‘Amusing Ourselves to Death‘. I recently listened to both 1984 and Brave New World back-to-back. I was struck by the contrast between a world run based on fear – versus – one run based on pleasure. I think that things are so messed up right now that we are stuck in a dystopian novel where both worlds exist simultaneously. Many people live in constant fear based on ‘facts’ that are cherry-picked, on half-truths, and even made up completely. Many more are living in a social media based alternate reality where their truths are based on a ‘news’ feed designed to entertain with a confusing mix of facts and fiction.

I don’t know how so many people could be naive enough to believe that the world is flat and other ridiculous conspiracies; That vaccines will be used to monitor you; That so many people can confuse mask use with being a sheep; Or that so many people can believe one group’s fight for rights undermines their own rights? Yet, across the globe, millions of people are so sure they are right, that protests and propaganda based on ignorance are now commonplace.

We are living in an era where humanity has no grasp on reality. Fiction and fact are interchangeable. ‘T’ruth is subjective. And a common, collective plan for peace and prosperity seems further away than any worlds that Huxley or Orwell could fabricate.

The future of conferences

In the past few weeks I’ve participated in Microsoft Teams and Zoom meetings with Jeff Borden and Dean Shareski. Both of them did a great job, but I look forward to doing face-to-face conferences again. Dean recently wrote, ‘The Future of Professional Learning Part 1‘,

“I do wonder if we’ll be more intentional about what constitutes and justifies a great face to face experience and what can be highly effective as a virtual option?”

This got be thinking about where we go with conferences post-pandemic? In response to a tweet about his post, I said,  “I was tiring of regular conferences, now I miss them. I think they will evolve to be more engaging (why travel somewhere for a PowerPoint that could be on Zoom) and I also think we might see more (online) pre/post conference engagement and learning.”

To expand on this idea, I don’t see things like pre-presentations or assignments and tasks being given before a conference (read as ‘not homework’), but I do see opportunities for conversation, interaction with the presenter, and with other conference attendees. I see icebreakers and teasers.  I see feedback to the presenter about what the attendees want. I see presenters providing clear learning intentions and a framework for their talk. I see presenters providing a personal introduction so that instead of the first 5-10 minutes of a 1 hour presentation slot being “This is who I am”, the presentation starts with an activity, engaging people with other people who have already connected online. I see interactive presentations that rely on participants being involved and engaged with the material.

Think about it. Why spend hundreds of dollars in flights, hotels, and food, to go to a room and get a PowerPoint and ‘talking head’ that could easily have been delivered to you at home? When I went to ISTE, my favourite memories are the blogger’s cafe, and meeting friends to do podcasts with (Shelly Sanchez Terrell and Kathleen McClaskey), and the people I went to ISTE with from my district. When I went to SXSW EDU, the people I went with and the podcasts that I did are the only things I remember (David Jakes, Jeff Richardson, and after the conference Miguel Guhlin). The future of conferences will need to be much more about creating experiences and making connections and less about presentations… this was already happening, but now that we have created digital experiences that will compete, the pull of conferences needs to be about enriching the experience and making it worth the effort to travel.

A global community

One love, one heart 
Let’s get together and feel all right. ~ Bob Marley

I used to think that we would reach a time in my lifetime where we could all be seen first and foremost as citizens of the world. That people would eventually be able to get a global passport and travel with a universal identity as global citizens. It was naive, but I thought it would happen.

With the rise of social media, I thought we were getting closer. I saw how social media extended the reach of individuals to find others of similar minds and interests. The internet extended our reach and our ability to understand others, whether they thought like us or not.

But while understanding our differences can help us see that we really are more alike than we think, differences in core values separate us further. Religions divide us more than anything else. That’s ironic and sad. Faith in a higher being sectionalizes humanity into narrow groupings that undermine our ability to focus on the well-being of our global community.

What would it take to go beyond the divisiveness of religious dogmatism?

What would help us see that as a species we have more to gain from being cooperative rather than confrontational?

What could bring us all together as a global community of citizens that care for our species and our world?

I fear that people will try with tyranny before they try with love.

The speed of change

Yesterday I was having a conversation with my colleague, Dave Sands, Principal of Technology Implementation in our district. He shared some good news that our 14th and final middle school in the district is becoming a BYOD – Bring Your Own Device school. This is a great accomplishment for our district. It starts with ensuring the infrastructure is in place. Next, teacher technology, capacity, and readiness are essential, and finally there needs to be support for families that can not afford their own technology. This takes time.

In the conversation I remembered a presentation that I did in 2009 at the Building Learning Communities conference in Boston titled “The POD’s are Coming!”

In the presentation I said, the seed of this presentation started with a conversation and a blog post. Here is what I said in an October 2008 post:

“PODs. We are about 5 years away from most of our students bringing PODs to school, Personally Owned Devices. I’m talking about pervasive access to laptops and iPhone-like devices in our schools. Every kid coming to school with more capability in their pockets and hands than most teachers have on their desk right now.

So in the presentation in July 2009, 9 months later, I said that we were 4 years away from this happening. I was wrong. It took 7 years longer than I thought.

When I look back now, I can see that we weren’t ready for this in 2013. The infrastructure was barely there, there was a lot of fear around the use of technology in the classroom because of the distraction (and disruption) technology causes, and teachers were not ready to lead the charge.

I know many other districts aren’t where we are, and yet we were 7 years slower than what I imagined was possible. Progress and change happen slower than we expect in schools. However, in the world we live in now, 7 years is an eternity to be behind doing what’s possible.

We will need schools to be far more agile in the future.

Vaccinated from the truth

It’s great to see that the Russian coronavirus vaccine is showing very positive results. And both the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines look equally as promising. Like many other vaccines before these, the side effects seem insignificant, and that holds a lot of promise for 2021 getting off to a great start.

This is refreshing news after I spent a bit of time going down a dark rabbit hole of links about conspiracy theories and end of days religious idiocy last night. I don’t usually follow these paths, but I got a spam message that was so ludicrous in claims that I had to check it out for pure entertainment value.

The claims were everything from technology like this being secretly added to vaccines to monitor you, to God speaking directly to people about the divinity of Donald Trump, to signs of the apocalypse and the end of the world. What blew me away was how these completely different narratives would cross over and interconnect. Every crazy idea added fuel to the next crazy idea. It wasn’t enough to hold one conspiratorial idea, they had to be connected and somehow one ‘proved’ that the other was ‘real’.

I dug around in this rabbit hole and what I saw was videos with thousands of likes, where the lines between a kernel of truth and delusional lies was nonexistent. It was hard to grasp where reality ended and bat-shit-crazy fantasy began. There seemed to be random moments where new ‘theories’ just jumped out and ‘proved’ some other unrelated stupidity. For example, a video talking about how vaccines are being used, (by elites in a conspiratorial cabal led by Bill Gates), to input instruments of the devil in you, then shifted to how your DNA is being altered by Chemtrails that make you think less about God. My imagination is pretty good, but I couldn’t fathom trying to make these connections up.

And through these crazy narratives one thing seems to prevail: that the world is conspiring to take away personal liberties. These people will not get vaccinated, no matter how safe and reliable the vaccine might be. They are already vaccinated from truth.

Five to Eight Percent

When I think about the modern company with shareholders, I can’t help but think that this system is designed to undermine ethical and environmental progress. There are companies laying off workers right now while providing shareholders huge dividends and returns. The system is flawed. These returns help drive the company stock price up at the expense of ethically growing the company… instead of helping workers keep their job and keep their wages fair in comparison to what shareholders get

What if companies promised shareholders a maximum of a 5%-8% return? Any company profits beyond that are invested back into the company, towards employees, and/or towards environmental or community initiatives. If this were the case, companies would still have the same commitment to meet shareholders targets, but those targets wouldn’t be based on greed. Instead they would be focussed on doing the most good.

I’m not an economist and don’t know all the ins and outs of how this would work? I don’t know what the magic return percentage should be? But I do know that the current model is based on greed and unsustainable growth. If companies capped shareholder returns at a safe investment amount, and promised to do good with what would have been more returns, I think there would still be a market for the stocks… And these companies could help make the world a better place.

Flying Cars

If you were any kind of fan of science fiction fan growing up, then you probably imagined that by now we would be traveling by flying car.

While I don’t think flying cars are too close to being a common means of transportation any time soon, I do think that there will come a time when this will be a viable and safe way to travel. How will this disrupt what we currently do? Often times the disruption isn’t fully thought about until the new technology is gaining ground.

How will we rethink roads? Will we be allowed to drive them, or will they be controlled by AI, which is fully aware of every other vehicle around them (in a way that we can’t accomplish with our brains and our limited attention?)

Would buildings have arrival and departures from their roofs? Will cars link up if they are heading in the same direction? Where will they be allowed to take off and land? What does rush hour look like?

We haven’t been very good at foreseeing how a new technology will change the way we do things, and I think flying cars will be one of those technologies that disrupts our lives significantly… and then we’ll have conversations about their value after they are inevitable.

We don’t prepare for technology to transform our lives, we just react to technology after we’ve integrated it into our lives.

The Great Reset or the Great Rethink?

I can’t believe how often good ideas get buried into conspiracy theories. See this article in the Nee York Times:

The baseless ‘Great Reset’ conspiracy theory rises again

A baseless conspiracy theory about the coronavirus has found new life as cases surge once again.

On Monday morning, the phrase “The Great Reset” trended with nearly 80,000 tweets, with most of the posts coming from familiar far-right internet personalities. The conspiracy alleges that a cabal of elites has long planned for the pandemic so that they could use it to impose their global economic control on the masses…

The article then shared this tweet:


Now, moving away from crackpots that spread the idea of some ruling cabal planning to use the pandemic to bring in a socialist and controlling government to strip you of rights and freedoms… there are actually some very smart people looking for the opportunity in this crisis.

These wise thinkers and leaders are trying to rethink some of the idiocy of our pre-covid world, and take this opportunity to do a reset of some sort. That’s not a conspiracy, that’s leadership.

Check out this World Economic Forum happening now: weforum.org.

What’s on the agenda?

Sustainable production: Almost 50% of the world’s energy consumption and 20% of greenhouse gas emissions are attributed to the manufacturing sector. How can we accelerate sustainable production and make it a competitive advantage? 

New digital business models: While much of the physical world came to a standstill during the global pandemic, digital connectivity soared. How can new digital business models help companies provide value and build resilience? 

Urban infrastructure and services: Many cities face serious obstacles to providing basic services, and COVID-19 has made it even more difficult. How can urban innovations help cities improve quality of life, resilience and sustainability?

Keeping populations healthy: The pandemic has revealed the need to strengthen health systems and ensure that populations have better information and control over their health. How can technologies help to improve and maintain healthier lives? 

Financial innovation: New financial technologies are shaping how services are provided around the world. How can we ensure that they are accessible and deliver greater value and efficiency to all parts of society?

Frontier technologies: Fourth Industrial Revolution technologies, such as artificial intelligence, blockchain and synthetic biology, are heralding a global transformation. How can we create, scale-up and govern these technologies so they “do no harm” while delivering the value we need? 

New work models: New work models are essential to address the challenges created by a transforming labour market, new skillset requirements and globally connected technology-driven industries. How can we ensure that employees are able to keep up with the evolving demand for skills and have the opportunity to contribute purposefully to the workplace of the future?

Imagine that: smart people getting together to ask meaningful questions about how our world could be a better place! Of course some of the solutions will be ‘out there’, big audacious (and to some, scary) ideas. But I want to live in a world where people challenge themselves to rethink what’s not working and use times like this to reset how we do things. The fact that some people are afraid of change shouldn’t generate fear-mongering and stop us from making thoughtful progress during challenging times.

For example, as an educator I’ve seen remote learning catapult the use of technology in classrooms and many great educators are rethinking the way they interact with students, and the way they get students to interact with each other. If the pandemic ends and we just go back to the way things were before, we are missing out on using some valuable lessons learned. And, if we go forward haphazardly from here without educational leaders trying to parse what we keep and don’t keep, then we are leaving innovation to chance.

Within every crisis there is an opportunity, and now is the time to rethink and to reset the post-pandemic world we will live in.