Worth Reading...

Sharing a few posts worth checking out.  


1. Manifesto 15- thoughts about how education should evolve in the near future

“The future is already here – it’s just not very evenly distributed” (William Gibson in Gladstone, 1999). The field of education lags considerably behind most other industries largely from our tendency to look backward, but not forward. We teach the history of literature, for example, but not the future of writing. We teach historically important mathematical concepts, but do not engage in creating new maths needed to build the future. Moreover, everything “revolutionary” taking place in learning has already happened at different scales, in bits and pieces, at different places. The full impacts for ourselves and our organizations will be realized when we develop the courage to learn from each others’ experiences, and accept the risk and responsibility in applying a futures orientation in our praxis.

2. Purpose of Education Is To Prepare Students For Life, It's That Simple- short but to the point post about making sure we prepare students for life and not focus on jobs that may or may not exist.

I agree with Ken Robinson. The core of our job as educators is to prepare them for "Life after school." It's really that simple. They don't need to be narrowly pigeonholed into existing jobs or jobs that "might" exist. They need the "mental, emotional, social and strategic resources" to live in a world that none of us really know about. Instead of rolling the dice with the lives of those we teach, we need to provide an education that allows them to face the unknown.

3.  Is Design Fiction the new Design Thinking?- the post explores he emergence of design fiction 

By making the familiar strange and the strange familiar, design fictions can ask questions about our everyday lives that other modes of designing cannot. While this may not be appealing to the pragmatists out there, it is a highly creative way of opening up some of our most challenging problems for discussion. 

4. The Future of Work and Learning: The Professional Ecosystem (Hart)- View on how professionals learn through a set of organizational and personal, interconnecting and interacting elements

There’s no longer such thing as a job for life; people are constantly moving around, and we are now seeing the early-stages of the so-called Freelance or Gig Economy. Individuals need to be ready to drop in and out of jobs with up-to-date skills and knowledge, as required. In order to do that they need to take responsibility for their own career development; they can’t rely on their company to support their career aspirations – so they need to be constantly learning in many different ways, not just for their current jobs but for their future jobs. This means they need a strong set of personal elements so they can learn continuously learn from e.g. exposure to people and from a flow of new ideas and resources. 

5.  Changing the Subject (Riordan and Rosenstock)- What Should Students Learn in the 21st Century?