[Local-Maine-Schools] "Did you know?" Questions about education, updated

[Dick Atlee]

This note is not directly related to consolidation in the financial 
sense that the Governor and DoE clearly intended it.  But it IS directly 
related to the "secondary" question in the consolidation effort -- the 
quality of education, so I hope it isn't too far off-topic for this list.

A while back, a short, snappy video/slide-show appeared on YouTube that 
spoke to the issue of the future that education is/isn't preparing kids for:

       http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mmz5qYbKsvM

I personally did not like it, because of its gee-whiz assumption that 
exponential trends in technology were somehow going to continue, and the 
seemingly unquestioned implication that that was good.  But a friend of 
mine tracked down an update that fleshed out the context and the point 
that the presentation was trying to make, and that caused me to take 
another look.

I still don't buy many of the assumptions, and an unquestioned premise 
seems to be that an essential purpose of education is preparation for a 
career.  But the "21st century skills" touted by the presentation are 
undoubtedly necessary for effective citizenship as well as for a career, 
and aren't inherently inconsistent with character building and 
non-linear thinking.  So I'm passing the update along, with its urging 
of everyone to ask of all levels of the educational effort what is being 
done in education.

Dick Atlee
SW Harbor

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The creator of the original video, Karl Fisch, is a high
school teacher in Colorado. On his blogspot, he explains that the
original Powerpoint presentation was part of a faculty training
session, and was intended to be thought-provoking and stir conversation.

There have been several updates -- the most recent with which Fisch was
involved can be found at

     http://thefischbowl.blogspot.com/2007/06/did-you-know-20.html

along with his explanation of the update:

"I (and Scott) had two main goals. First, I wanted to make it less us
(as in U.S.) versus them. That wasn't my intent in the original, but
it certainly could be interpreted that way. It still includes some of
the U.S./China/India statistics, because we felt those were indicative
of the "shifts" that are occurring, but it avoids words like "we" and
"they." But we want all kids to be successful, whether they are in the
U.S., India, China or somewhere else. We believe these ideas and
conversations should be occurring globally, and we hope this helps
contribute to that conversation.

"Second, one of the (many) weaknesses of the original is that it didn't
ask anything of the viewers, or direct them to any resources. (In my
own defense, that's because it was just for my staff and I was doing
the follow-up. As I've talked about previously, I had no idea that it
would spread like it did . . .). This new version asks some questions
at the end and directs folks to a wiki with some additional information
(the wiki -- http://shifthappens.wikispaces.com/ -- is still a work in 
progress, but we'll get there
eventually). The wiki is not intended as a "one-stop" resource, just a
fairly simple jumping off point for folks that would like more
information. Hopefully they will be drawn into the conversations that
we all have been a part of over the last few years. (I wanted to ask
even more questions -- I may blog those eventually – but it would've
made the presentation way too long -- at over 8 minutes, it's already
pushing it)."