Tag Archives: prediction

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.

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.

We do not know

In a number of different places I’ve already said that COVID-19 has humbled me in that my thoughts and predictions have been way off. I’m not the only one.

Here is an interesting but worrisome article from Vox: My patient caught Covid-19 twice. So long to herd immunity hopes?

“We do not know how much immunity to expect once someone is infected with the virus, we do not know how long that immunity may last, and we do not know how many antibodies are needed to mount an effective response.”

There is still so much we need to learn about this virus that has changed the social and economic habits of humankind on a massive scale. So much we don’t know.

Here’s one thing I believe, (while admittedly not truly knowing):

We are going to be dealing with COVID-19 social restrictions and economic repercussions well into 2022.

I want to be wrong. I hope I’m wrong. I doubt that I’m wrong.

I tend to be optimistic, and this doesn’t sound very optimistic. Not at all. But I think accepting that from now and right through 2021, we will be navigating a defensive response to COVID-19 will help us stay positive. We can plan the best possible path forward facing a very challenging scenario, and be pleasantly surprised if I’m wrong. This is better than hoping for the best and continually being disappointed.

If we prepare for a long response, adhering to the required social distancing and social norms recommended to us, we will make things better, faster.

The path forward won’t be easy, but maybe we’ll learn some valuable lessons along the way. On the path, we need to be patient with each other. Tolerant. Forgiving. Kind.

We aren’t designed to live our lives in a constant state of anxiety or stress, and it’s hard to constantly adapt to change. But the rules for social interaction are going to be fluid for a while, sometimes loosening restrictions and opening public and social spaces, sometimes closing them down again. We need to be fluid too. Responsive. Adaptable.

We may not know what the future holds, but we will be more prepared for that future if we prepare for a prolonged and bumpy ride. Let’s work together and make it as smooth as possible.