Education Futures creativity Archives

11 Dec 2017

Cheating the death of imagination: Teaching the unknowable

By John W. Moravec, Ph.D.

The idea of a Technological Singularity has been discussed and debated intensely since the early 1990s. Coined by Vernor Vinge and popularized by Ray Kurzweil, the idea is that as technologies evolve, technologies improve, costs decrease; and, in turn, the process of technological evolution advances and speeds itself up, creating a J-curve of exponential, accelerating change. Eventually, the J-curve hits an inflection point, and change begins to occur at timescales that seem nearly instantaneous. This is the Technological Singularity.

At Education Futures, in our work to help guide governments and organizations, we’ve looked hard at what this means to humans and human systems – in particular with regard to how we will learn and work in the future. In this frame, the Technological Singularity also represents the point at which change occurs so rapidly that the human mind cannot imagine what will happen next. Moreover, technological change facilitates social change (and vice-versa). We need to prepare for rapidly-occurring, intense periods of social, cultural, and economic transformation.

The Technological Singularity represents the limit of human imagination.

It is important to note that the J-curve of accelerating change is graphed independently of scale. There is not a standard measurement of change, and there is no measurement of time. We can look at illustrative examples for correlates, such as the growth of microprocessor computing power under Moore’s Law, but the idea of a Technological Singularity is subjective to the human experience.

Herein lies the rub: We are all very different. We have differing abilities to cope with change, to imagine new futures, to communicate, to solve problems, use resources wisely, and so forth. We cannot expect to experience ‘the’ Technological Singularity together. Rather, we should prepare to experience many individual singularities, as individuals, groups, and as a society. Depending on who we are and the contexts in which we are placed, we will hit the limits of our imagination – our singularities – at different times and under different circumstances. Industries are transforming (and disappearing!) at different rates and at different times, communities are shifting at independent and co-dependent paces, and individuals and families are under increasing pressure to stay relevant.

Humans are not afraid of change, but we fear the unknown. When we hit the limits of our imaginations, we push back toward the knowable, often with very ugly consequences. Brexit, the election of Donald Trump, the state-sponsored fake news phenomenon, and the rise of slavery advocate Roy Moore in Alabama – all inconceivable a decade ago – serve as examples that humans are prone to a retreat toward bigotry, ignorance, and hate when confronted with uncertainty. Like the followers of Ned Ludd worked to sabotage the industrial movement in the 19^th century, these socially regressive Neo-Luddites subvert technological change to regress society toward an imagined past, no matter how horrible, that presents themselves with a sense of certainty.

A community cannot progress technologically while sabotaging itself socially. While our singularities may be unavoidable, we can at least learn how to cope with them by learning to embrace the unknown. This, at the forefront, requires a tremendous amount of imagination and creativity from all of us.

Our schools, which are designed to prepare youth for static futures, need to be urgently repurposed to prepare all of society for the unknowable. Imagination, creativity, and innovation, together with support for greater agency and self-efficacy must underpin serious efforts to achieve meaningful outcomes for all learners. We must balance core content knowledge with soft skills such as simulational thinking, knowledge production, technology, intercultural communication, critical and multi-paradigmatic thinking, focused imagination, developed intuition, emotional intelligence, and systems design.

Are you ready to take the dive into teaching and learning for the unknowable? Continue on with our series on invisible learning:

13 Oct 2016

Bob Dylan and the genius of context

By John W. Moravec, Ph.D.

When I woke up this morning, I was delighted to learn Bob Dylan was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature for “having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition.” For those of us in Minnesota, still mourning the loss of Prince, this was a welcomed surprise that feels healing, both culturally and spiritually.

I’ve been watching the University of Minnesota’s twitter feed closely. Dylan went to the University of Minnesota when his career was forming, and the University always lets us know immediately anytime anybody connected with the institution wins a Nobel Prize. If they had their way, they’d have us believe that the sun would not rise without them!

But not this time. It took them until just before 11am to make the announcement. And, it was distant, if not cautious:

Congratulations to a #MN and @dinkytown legend Bob Dylan! #NobelPrize https://t.co/gNaFtcQus2

— University of MN (@UMNews) October 13, 2016

Why such an innocuous statement this time? Well, history records that Dylan dropped out after just a few semesters; he was successful without the University.

Don’t get me wrong: I love the University of Minnesota – or, the “U” as we affectionately call it. I got my Ph.D. there, and started off my academic career at the Twin Cities campus. But I think there is a crucial lesson to be learned:

Genius is not created by the institution; genius is fostered by the context in which the institution interfaces with the community.

Dylan’s career started not at the University, but across the street in the Dinkytown district of Minneapolis. Dinkytown was eclectic: a zone for free thought, open expression, independent businesses, and a food and bar scene that catered to students, faculty, and staff. The University attracted people in, but it was the music scene of the adjoining neighborhood that helped to propel him and get a start in his career.

After a year at the “U,” he moved to Greenwich Village in New York, and the rest is history.

And the University remains. It’s churned out a few Nobel laureates along the way, but I fear that we will see fewer creatives, like Dylan, emerge. The reason is simple: the context is being destroyed.

The University of Minnesota, like nearly every other institution, has learned that higher education is a big business. This extends not just to research and teaching, but also to the University’s presence in the community. It comes as no surprise that the “U” has been a major player in the redevelopment of Dinkytown. Small, older buildings that once housed its creative scene are being replaced with monotonous, monolithic apartment buildings, chain stores, and generic fast food options. Freewheeling politics, art, and other cultural expressions are being replaced by unimaginative configurations of concrete, steel, and glass.

The context for fostering genius is vanishing. I’m sure many more Nobel laureates connected with our beloved “U” will be announced in the coming years, but there will be no other Bob Dylan emerging from the University without an interface for creativity.

24 May 2016

Lessons from the toilet II: Captive audience

By Kelly Killorn-Moravec, Ed.D.

As teachers, we often do not have control over what we must teach. But, we do have some control over how students engage in learning.

This story has an unusual opening. Upon shutting the bathroom stall door at a college campus I was recently visiting, I was greeted by a framed poster of information and upcoming university events called the Captivated Audience Notice (CAN). I’ve seen this method of communication before, titled the Toilet Tribune, the Potty Press, and other clever monikers. But, this particular version irritated me.

Captivate, as defined by the Cambridge Dictionary, means to hold the attention of someone by being extremely interesting, exciting, charming, or attractive. Allow me to assure you, none of the information presented on that poster was more than mildly interesting, and it was certainly neither exciting, charming, nor attractive — mainly because it was all irrelevant to me.

In my opinion, a better title for this series of posters would be the “Captive Audience Notice”. While I was not truly a prisoner in the stall, I definitely did not have a choice in whether to use the bathroom, and no real option to escape once I entered the stall. The only choice I had was whether to focus my attention on the poster. My willingness to read the poster stemmed more from the novelty of its placement in the bathroom stall, a location where there was nothing else to capture my attention for the few moments I spent there attending to other matters, than because I was curious about its content. I have absolutely no recollection of what was printed there. It merely served as something to occupy my mind in a situation where I was momentarily held captive by my body’s needs.

This got me thinking. How does the idea of captive versus captivated translate into classrooms? Are our students treated as prisoners prohibited from escaping under the guise of teaching them? Or, are we cultivating experiences that are extremely interesting, exciting, charming, or attractive to hold their attention to facilitate their learning? How often do students attend to something that is irrelevant or uninteresting, simply because they have no choice but to be in the classroom and once there, nothing else for them to do? How often are students’ curiosities piqued by something at school that is so exciting, they can’t help but pay attention? Are they being held captive by teaching or are they being captivated by learning?

A popular meme that appeared on my social media feeds lately shows the Most Interesting Man in the World accompanied by the following text: “I don’t always care about my grade, but when I do it’s at the end of the semester and even though I didn’t do all of the assignments, I’ll ask for extra credit now.”

It’s always presented as a shared experience for teachers to commiserate with one another in a light-hearted manner. But… wait… what if, instead, the meme read, “I don’t always care about learning what my teacher decides is important, but when I do it’s because I’m curious about the topic and decide I want to know more, not because I’m being bribed with points and a grade.”

To me, this seems far more representative of the actual, underlying issue here. And, it certainly paints students in a better light, though not so much the teachers who would prefer to blame them for their lack of attention, motivation, and engagement in assignments that are neither personally relevant nor representative of what is expected of them as modern citizens in our society.

Why do we resort to using points as bribes for compliance? Why do we blame students for not engaging with what we attempt to force them to learn when lessons are designed to fit standards rather than facilitate student growth toward personal learning goals based on individual interests and aptitudes?

As a part of my job, I am required to attend specific professional development opportunities. These are workshops or programs others have chosen for me based on what they believe to be important learning for a person in my role. Some of them are indeed relevant and interesting to me both personally and professionally; many (if not most) are not. Luckily, I also have a few opportunities (though, not many) to select my own options for professional development based on my interests, aptitudes, abilities, and self-assessed needs for growth within my role.

Can you guess which opportunities directly impact my personal growth and professional practice because I engage in and learn from them? Can you guess which opportunities I spend disengaged, either talking with those around me or focused on my laptop, working on activities that are more personally and professionally relevant to me? Can you guess which opportunities I am excited to attend and those I dread?

I theorize that students who are held captive by teacher-driven, teacher-centered, unengaging, uninteresting, and irrelevant content deal with their forced captivity in one of three ways: misbehavior, compliance, or a mix of both.

Students who misbehave are disruptive. They talk to each other. They bother other kids. They get up to go to the bathroom when they do not need to go. They sharpen their pencils until all that is left is a tiny, sharp point and an eraser (and then they sharpen the eraser). They doodle. They text their friends. They sing. They tap their pencils as if playing a drum solo in a heavy metal band. They hold a pencil between their thumb and forefinger and wave it up and down so it appears to bend. They make funny noises. They stare out the window. They think about what they plan to do when class is over. They interrupt the teacher. They daydream. They watch the clock. They post on social media. They ask questions that were already addressed. They frustrate the teacher.

I, myself, am guilty of many of these behaviors when faced with being forced to “learn” content someone else has selected for me. How about you?

Conversely, compliant students follow the rules. They stay in their assigned seats. They remain silent during work time. They use their time wisely. They make pretty posters. They diligently take notes. They follow all directions. They listen the first time. They memorize. They copy from the board. They develop flashy slide shows. They repeat facts. They do what they are told.

My hunch is that the these compliant students are mostly comprised of rule-followers who do what they are told because it is how they were taught to “play school.” They may be motivated by praise, points, and grades, but they are not engaged in learning. They likely get very little out of what is being taught; thus, although their behavior may be preferable because it is easier for teachers to manage, their learning is no better than that of their misbehaving peers.

While it may seem like the ideal classroom situation to have rows of dutiful students, silently listening, scribbling down notes, following directions, memorizing information, and repeating facts, in reality, these students are held captive by teaching. The students who comply do so because there is nothing else to attend to.

In my experience, when people are captivated by what they are learning, they behave appropriately (and by this I mean fittingly, according to the learning situation) simply because they are interested in a topic that is of personal relevance. They are excited and motivated to learn more. They identify what is important enough to learn and what is not. They decide the best way to do the learning. They determine their own modes through which to make their learning visible to others. They determine whether to make their learning visible to others. They explore new avenues of learning just to learn more. They seek out new resources. If a prerequisite skill exists that must be attained in order to facilitate their learning, they will master that, too. And, they stop learning about something that is no longer of interest to them and move on to the next topic.

Being truly captivated by learning is hard work! No matter the topic, it requires creativity, reflection, determination, problem solving, collaboration, critical thinking, self-assessment, perseverance, and the transfer and translation of knowledge into new situations.

These are the kinds of skills our students deserve to have as they leave our school systems. These are the kinds of skills their potential employers will be requiring. These are the kinds of skills people need to succeed, no matter the path they choose. And, as educators, it is our job to provide them with opportunities to develop these skills.

How do we really want to educate? Do we want compliant students who either do what they are told or misbehave because they are held captive by teacher-driven, teacher-focused instruction? Or, are we willing to facilitate students’ captivation in their own learning?

As teachers, we often do not have control over what we must teach. But, we do have some control over how students engage in learning.

If we want our students to leave school with the requisite skills necessary for success along any path they choose, we must provide them with opportunities to think for themselves and make decisions about what is important to learn and when and how to do the learning. Only then will students truly be captivated by their learning and not held captive by our teaching.

26 Oct 2015

Designing the future of research libraries and special libraries in Knowmad Society

By Education Futures

Paper prepared for Congreso Amigos 2015, Ciudad de México

John W. Moravec, Ph.D.
Founder, Education Futures LLC
john@educationfutures.com

Kelly E. Killorn, Ed.D.
Instructor, Hamline University
kkillorn01@hamline.edu

October 1, 2015

Abstract

In an era consumed with accelerating technological and social change, coupled with rapidly evolving organizational needs and missions, research libraries and special libraries need to reframe why, how, and for whom they exist and explore new pathways to realize these functions. This paper explores a strategic framework to navigate a society in constant flux, disentangling information, knowledge, and innovation. We plot a pathway for maximizing creativity and innovation capital for libraries in knowledge-based institutions, together with the communities they serve.

Paper type: Conceptual

Keywords: innovation; knowledge-based organizations; research libraries; special libraries; strategic leadership; Knowmad Society

Introduction

Research libraries and special libraries are finding themselves at a crossroads. Having served as keepers of static bodies of information, they are increasingly tasked with supporting the generation of new knowledge in a world that is becoming seemingly more chaotic and ambiguous. In an interview with Paul Zenke (2012), Steven Bell, Associate University Librarian for Research and Instruction at Temple University suggests, “what can we do as academic librarians to better prepare ourselves for what is certainly an uncertain future? We just have to think more entrepreneurially and look for these opportunities.”

How does an academic library or special library reframe itself in an emerging reality that demands more innovation in the roles and services they might provide? In this paper, we propose a strategic leadership framework for understanding and designing the future of research and special libraries in Knowmad Society.

The challenge of Knowmad Society

In the introduction to Knowmad Society, Moravec (2013a) writes:

The emergence of Knowmad Society impacts everybody. It is a product of the changes in a world driven by exponential accelerating technological and social change, globalization, and a push for more creative and context-driven innovations. It is both exciting and frightening. It presents us with new opportunities, challenges, and responsibilities. And, we recognize that in a world of accelerating change, the future is uncertain. This prompts a key question: In a world consumed with uncertainty, how can we ensure the success of ourselves as individuals, our communities, and the planet? (p. 18)

This question extends especially to research libraries and special libraries. How can these institutions survive and thrive in an era that is not based on the availability of information, but instead on the contextualized use of knowledge to solve new problems?

Knowmads are nomadic knowledge workers, who are creative, imaginative, and innovative, and can work with almost anyone, anytime, and anywhere (Moravec, 2008). As citizens of Knowmad Society, knowmads are individuals who, “are valued for the personal knowledge that they possess, and this knowledge gives them a competitive advantage. Knowmads are responsible for designing their own futures […And,] a knowmad is only employed on a job as long as he or she can add value to an organization. If not, it’s time to move on to the next gig.” (Moravec, 2013a, p. 19).

The growth of knowmadic, contingent, or otherwise contract employees in the workforce changes the face of knowledge-based organizations. By the year 2020, it is projected that 45% of the workforce will be knowmadic (Moravec, 2013a, p. 19). For these contingent workers, a greater focus is now placed on how they add value – particularly at the individual level – within institutions.

Knowmad Society is also rooted in the reality of an exponentially-growing abundance of information (see esp. The Law of Accelerating Returns popularized by Kurzweil, 2005), and most of this does not reside in libraries. Whereas libraries used to have an important and definite role in providing information as a scarce resource, the abundance of information readily available elsewhere combined with a rapidly changing society that demands different information than may be found in libraries. This obviates many of the roles libraries traditionally held. How can a reference library compete with Google or Wikipedia? How can a film library compete with Netflix or YouTube? How can a corporation’s special library keep up with the ever-changing demands of the business as the organization “pivots” to meet new market realities?

For knowledge-based organizations that possess research or special libraries, the role of the library needs to be re-missioned from being a passive resource into a strategic organizer. The library needs to support and enable individuals and teams within organizations to add the greatest value they can, including supporting intrapreneurs (entrepreneurs within the organization) that take risk to create new value.

Challenges knowledge-based organizations face in Knowmad Society

Challenges to conventional wisdom faced by knowmadic organizations are numerous. They may be pressured by the de-hierarchization of leadership (i.e., shared leadership and responsibility), often expressed as organizational flattening. And, they are pressured by the accelerating pace of changes in technology and society (Moravec, 2013b). This means those at the top of an institution’s hierarchy need to consider relinquishing control of what information, knowledge, or strategic goals they believe to be the most important, otherwise risk becoming institutional laggards themselves.

Moreover, our relationships with information and knowledge are transforming, and too often their meanings are commingled. Information is constructed from bits and pieces of data. Knowledge is built by making personal meaning from information (Polyani, 1966). Innovations emerge when individuals and groups take action with what they know to create new value. While we are good at managing information, we cannot manage the personal knowledge created in the heads of our workers. And, human capital in knowledge-based organizations is becoming increasingly more expensive (see esp. Baumol & Towse, 1997). We cannot get the same efficiency gains from human systems as we can from machine systems. Our old approaches, built from principles of “scientific management,” simply do not work anymore.

Invisible learning in the age of knowmads

Invisible learning is a recognition that most of what we learn is “invisible” – that is, learning is achieved through non-formal, informal, and even serendipitous types of knowledge building. While this applies especially to schools, it is also relevant within other learning organizations. Cobo & Moravec (2011) write (translated by the authors):

The result of several years of research, invisible learning is a conceptual proposal, and it seeks to integrate various approaches into a new paradigm of learning and development that is especially relevant in the 21st century. This approach takes into account the impact of technological advances and changes in formal, non-formal, and informal education, in addition to the intermediary metaspaces between them. This approach aims to explore an overview of options for creating education that is future-relevant today. Invisible learning does not propose a formal theory, but instead presents a metatheory capable of integrating different ideas and perspectives. It has therefore been described as a protoparadigm, which is in a beta phase of construction.

1. It is a socio-technological conceptual archetype for a new ecology of education from collected ideas that combine and reflect on learning that is understood as a continuum that extends throughout life and can occur at any time or place. This approach is not restricted to a particular learning space or time, and it proposes to incentivize strategies that combine formal and informal learning. This perspective seeks to stimulate reflections and ideas on how to obtain an education that is more relevant, and one that reduces the gap between what is taught in formal education and what the labor market demands.

2. Invisible learning is also viewed as a search for remixing forms of learning that include continuous portions of creativity, innovation, collaborative and distributed work, and experimental laboratories – as well as new forms for translating knowledge.

3. Invisible learning is not suggested as a standard answer for all learning contexts. Rather, what is sought is that these ideas may be adopted and adapted to meet the specific and diverse needs of each context. While in some contexts, it can serve as a complement to traditional education, it may be used in other spaces as an invitation to explore new ways of learning. Many approaches to education seek to operate from the top-down (government control, the control of educational processes, policy approaches, etc.); Invisible learning instead proposes a revolution of ideas from the bottom-up (“do it yourself,” “user-generated content,” “problem-based learning,” “lifelong learning,” etc.).

4. Invisible learning suggests new applications of information and communications technologies (ICTs) for learning within a broader framework of skills for globalization. This proposal includes a broad frame of competencies, knowledge, and skills that fit a context to increase levels of employability, promote the formation of “knowledge brokers,” or expand the dimensions of traditional learning. (pp. 23-24)

Knowledge development within the invisible learning paradigm suggests significant implications for knowledge-based organizations. If an individual is able to find equivalent information via Google or some other ubiquitous, digital platform then the role of a library as an information provider needs to be reconsidered. Likewise, libraries need to recognize themselves not as information banks, but as connectors of information for new knowledge creation.

Of paramount importance, the relationships between consumers (e.g., individuals, research teams, and workgroups) and libraries need to shift from one where the library serves as a resource toward one where opportunities for creative remixing and new knowledge development are facilitated. This suggests that libraries, utilizing new information communication technology (ICT) applications, can play a critical role in connecting individuals and groups together to build synergies that otherwise would not be supported within an institution. In this role, the library remissions itself from being an access point of information toward an architect of connection making between points of information, knowledge, and expertise.

A leadership framework for libraries to navigate a rapidly changing society

The topic of innovation is a frequent target within academic and business literature. Many authors seek to describe modes and types of innovation within organizations, for example: Clayton Christensen’s (1997) disruptive innovation, Thomas Kuhn’s (1962) breakthroughs through scientific revolutions, and Gibbon’s et al’s (1994) Modes I and II dynamics of knowledge production through research. We build upon the spirit of these works to propose a framework that focuses on strategic leadership, where we define “innovation” within knowledge-based organizations as the purposive use of knowledge to provide a new solution to a problem that creates value.

In research libraries and special libraries, we argue new leadership, oriented around innovation, is needed to encourage mission-driven research and actions. We frame this within three types of institutional innovation, ordered by their potential for effect – and also difficulty in implementation – with the third mode (“Type III”) designated as having the most potential for impact. Table 1 illustrates the distinguishing characteristics between the three types, along with their ease of implementation for leadership.

Table 1

Three types of institutional innovation

Type I

Type II

Type III

Characteristics	Interventions	Attitudes	Systems-based
	Vectors	Beliefs	Core-transformative
	Quick hacks	Trendy ideas	Revolutions

Ease of implementation	Easy to sell	Easy to sell	Hard to sell
	Easy to implement	Hard to implement	Really hard to implement
	Easy to measure	Hard to measure	Really hard to measure

Type I innovations consist of interventions, vectors, and quick hacks. They are “easy to sell.” That is, their key ideas are simple to communicate and support for the ideas is easy to build. Implementation is also generally easy as only a simple intervention is needed, which is likewise easy to measure. Institutional impact is predicted to become low as simple interventions rarely create core transformations.

Type II innovations are centered around attitudes, beliefs, and trendy ideas. Like Type I innovations, they are easy to sell, but implementation and measurement are difficult. One example is building creativity into an organization. We imagine few leaders would believe building greater creativity into an organization is a bad idea, but developing a more creative organization is a challenge to implement. It can also be challenging to maintain momentum of a creative endeavor. And, within creative organizations, the extent to which one is creative is challenging to measure.

Type III innovations are built upon true revolutions that interact on a systems level with the knowledge organization to transform the core or “heart” of the institution. This is often expressed as creative destruction: tearing down the structure and culture of an organization and rebuilding it into something new. These innovations are hard to sell, as very few people want a total revolution in their organization. And, like a revolution, they are very hard to implement. Further, they touch so many core areas of the organization that measurement becomes very difficult (unless macro-level, post-hoc methods of measurement are used, such as asking, “did the institution survive the revolution?”).

Within this framework, we recognize that while some innovations may be preferred over others, each of the three types can create value for a knowledge-based organization. More importantly, innovations from the three types may interplay and integrate with each other, contributing to the goals or desired outcomes of others. A Type I or Type II innovation may very well fall within the overall strategic framework of a Type III innovation.

Table 2

Examples of the three types of institutional innovation in research libraries and special libraries contexts

Type I

Type II

Type III

Virtual delivery of services and content	Transforming library into collaborative spaces	Library laboratories
Mobile applications	Blended librarian	Invisible and tacit learning
Institutional repository development	Expanded library	Knowmadic places

Type I institutional innovation examples include the virtual delivery of services and content, the use of mobile applications, and the development of institutional repositories. In the past, the main purpose of academic libraries was to provide materials needed immediately by users and to store materials for future use. However, as the current landscape continues to shift toward greater digitization of information, libraries have begun doing the same. Rather than serving as a storehouse for print items such as books and journals, libraries are digitizing and storing content in institutional repositories for more immediate access and use. Further, libraries are investing in services and tools to enhance the discovery, access, and use of information (Levine-Clark, 2014). Consumers are able to access library resources at any hour, any day, and helpdesks are now available online. As end users move toward utilizing their own mobile devices, libraries are working to deliver content to them. Content and services are delivered via email, text messaging, instant messaging, and social networking services (Dysart, Jones, & Zeeman, 2011). Content is increasingly streamed to classrooms (Jantz, 2012). In addition to traditional printed materials, eBooks are becoming more popular and accessible. In fact, libraries are buying fewer print materials as they make the shift to digitization of resources (Dysart et al., 2011; Levine-Clark, 2014). These Type I innovations are easy to communicate and garner support from end users within the organization. Implementation, effectiveness, and degree of success are simple to measure. The overall impacts of these innovations, however, remains relatively low, as the core functions of a library remain static.

Type II institutional innovation examples include transforming libraries into collaborative spaces, blended librarians, and expanded libraries. As libraries continue downsizing their print collections in favor of digitized access of information, physical space is increasingly available for use in different and more flexible ways (Dysart et al., 2011; Jantz, 2012; Sinclair, 2009). The reinvention of these spaces for social, technological, and cultural uses provides new opportunities for co-working, collaborating, and delivery of specialized trainings (Sinclair, 2009). Some libraries house coffee shops and dining establishments. These changes in the ways library spaces are used and the continued digitization of resources has shifted the responsibilities of the librarian toward becoming “blended librarians.” They are less focused on transactional services and provide more people-intensive services toward improving end users’ experience (Dysart et al., 2011). Their focus is blending library skills, information services, ICT, and instructional design. Blended librarians collaborate with information technology departments to develop skills with online tools, software, multimedia, and mobile applications (Bell & Shank, 2004; Sinclair, 2009). They further expand beyond the walls of the physical library (Sinclair, 2009), collaborating with many different departments, embedding themselves within project and work teams, using their skills to develop services specific to the needs of the staff with whom they work (Dysart et al., 2011). These shifts from the traditional “pull” approach of library use toward a “push” style of engaging the community and working with consumers have extended the reach of the services and content available through the library. These Type II innovations are centered on the beliefs that work is collaborative in nature and the library’s role is to accommodate consumers through availability and accessibility, physical space, and support. These ideas are relatively easy to market internally, however, implementation and the measurement of success of these ideas are more difficult.

Type III institutional innovation examples include library laboratories, invisible and tacit learning, and knowmadic places. Some libraries are beginning to transform into laboratories and maker spaces to encourage user collaboration using traditional library materials combined with other types of creative and innovative resources (Colgrove, 2013). They provide tools, machines, and workshops designed for experimentation and development (Berry, 2012). Tools such as projectors, 3D printers, and large screen monitors are available for use (Berry, 2012; Colgrove, 2013; Sinclair, 2009). Users also have access to studios for producing their own photography, audio remixing, videos, and digital media such as podcasts and blogs (Berry, 2012; Colgrove, 2013). The focus of simply using library resources and materials is shifting toward actually creating with them (Colgrove, 2013). Invisible learning spaces enable library users to develop knowledge through non-formal and informal approaches, often employing “do-it-yourself” or hacker-like thinking to develop new understandings and solutions to challenges and opportunities (Cobo & Moravec, 2011). Knowmadic places create, through design, emotional links between spaces and their users, supporting the abilities of individuals to think differently, while flattening hierarchies (Noriega et al., 2013, p. 144). These Type III innovations transform what was once considered the purpose of a library: from one that houses and makes available resources and materials to consume, toward something that is very different from a traditional library “blueprint” and the formation of something unique to the host organization. These revolutionary ideas, because they are so transformative and question the very “fabric” of traditional organizations, are hard to sell, implement, and measure.

It is important to note that while the potential to create impact is obviously greater in Type III innovations, we should not downplay the importance of the other two types – each of these types of innovation have value. Strategic leadership for organizations that support knowmadic entrepreneurship (and intrapreneurship) requires approaches that address interdisciplinary, systems integration of knowledge-based work. These require a transformation in the way libraries operate, from looking at interventions and vectors toward creating real organizational change: systems-based, core-transformative, and those that challenge our key assumptions about how we relate, learn, and collaborate with each other. This means considerations should be made as to how to feed Type I and Type II initiatives into a greater Type III revolution.

For these revolutions to have impact, libraries need to reframe why, how, and for whom they exist and explore new pathways to realize these functions. From an organizational standpoint, this suggests libraries (and their leaders) need to build a metacognitive sense of the institution: an awareness of what is not known about the organization, its goals, and methods. Only then is it justifiable to engineer breaks from the system that challenge the status quo and enable Type III transformations to flourish.

An example pathway for maximizing organizational creativity and innovation capital

Type III innovations, at their core, engage with (and challenge) organizations to employ more creative resources toward solving a greater, mission-driven problem. As the challenges are greater, they resemble a “Noble Quest” for transformative leadership.

As an example of one such Type III goal, to support knowmadic workers and learners, the library can be transformed into a knowmadic hub, where new knowledge creation and the contextual application (doing) of knowledge are facilitated, in contrast to the traditional role of a library as an information repository. This transforms the space into one of knowledge brokerage (see Meyer, 2010) and action. The library, as a knowmadic space, could incorporate other innovations, such as the virtual delivery of services (Type I) and the transformation from stacks of resources to collaborative spaces (Type II).

The library as a knowmadic hub is centered on sharing knowledge, expertise, and ideas, connecting an organization’s people and other actors together to create purposive value. As organizations become less hierarchical in function and increasingly operate as mesh networks (see esp. Allee, 2003; van den Hoff, 2011), the knowmadic library and its librarians can find new roles in serving as connecting hubs, particularly with smart, purposive applications of ICTs.

In lieu of conclusion, spaghetti needs meatballs

Figure 1. A traditional, formal organizational chart.

Figure 2. A value-oriented knowledge organization.

Organizations that are driven by value networks and knowmadic knowledge can seem messy. While they may still maintain top-down organization charts, the operation may appear chaotic to an observer. Allee (2003) writes:

Much of the chaos that results from organizational change efforts arises not from trying to do something new, but from careless disregard of the complex system or systems that will be changed or affected in the process. Organizations evolve along multiple dimensions. When organizations change, old patterns of relationships are dismantled and reassembled into new configurations. People can better see where to make needed adjustments in their own activities without wreaking havoc on the whole system if they more fully understand the essential exchanges and relationships that create value. (p. 194)

When Allee maps how these organizations function as value networks, they no longer appear as orderly, top-down operations with clear lines of relationships (Figure 1). Rather, they appear as complex strings of spaghetti with multifaceted connections flowing between and among various levels and spans of an organization (Figure 2). In such a configuration, certain individuals and departments emerge as larger players (“meatballs”), with greater connections across various levels of the institution; some meatballs are larger than others.

As knowmadic hubs, libraries become super-connectors, knowledge brokers, and facilitators of invisible learning within the institution. Perhaps appearing as a large meatball in a map of the organization’s spaghetti-like, mesh network, added value is created for its users and stakeholders by brokering new opportunities for knowledge development and innovative actions.

In this rapidly-changing world, where information is literally at the tips of our fingers and an institution’s ability to act on knowledge drives its potential for success, does the future need libraries? Or, does it need meatballs?

References

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Special thanks to Patricia Avila (INFOTECH), Wouter Schallier (United Nations-CEPAL), and Giovanna Valenti (FLACSO México) for their remarks as panel discussants at Congreso Amigos 2015. Additional thanks go to Alejandro Pisanty and Cees Hoogendijk for the commends on the draft document on academia.edu

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

12 Apr 2015

Creative classrooms in Patagonia

By John W. Moravec, Ph.D.

Education Futures founder, John Moravec, had the pleasure of visiting with the Ministry of Education in the Province of Chubut, Argentina for Aulas Creativas on February 27-28 this year. The program team recently published this excellent video, which outlines new perspectives for thinking about education.

When John released Manifesto 15 two months earlier, he had no idea that the message and the movement it is inspiring would grow so quickly, and attract so much international attention, especially in Patagonia. We are really touched that this work is helping to change the conversation and form new perspectives for evolving education in the province. For us, that’s the most rewarding part of our work.

John wrote to us:

In this brief visit, I enjoyed meeting the ministry and area teachers. I am grateful for the hospitality Ileana Farre and her husband, Ian Davie, extended to me during my visit. After hanging out with Ileana, Ian, and Gonzalo Frasca, I must say there is nothing better than good company and great food with dinosaurs, great views of the Southern Sky, and penguins!

09 Oct 2012

Learning in Knowmad Society: Making invisible learning visible

By John W. Moravec, Ph.D.

Preface: Today, the Waag Society (institute for art, science and technology) released a new publication, Spelen leren, lerend spelen (“Playing games, learning games”). I have a short article article in the magazine, which was published in Dutch. Here’s an English translation:

In 1980, Seymour Papert predicted that computers would fundamentally transform education –and ultimately make schools, themselves, redundant. 30 years later, computers in schools are the norm, but we are still teaching the old way. Why?

In education, we have a hard time disentangling technologies from our conversations about innovations in learning. Too often, we place technologies in the forefront, which end up obscuring authentic knowledge formation. We often take the best technologies and squander the opportunities they afford us. Our knowledge-based societies demand a deeper change in our culture of teaching, and, particularly, in the ways in which we learn (and unlearn).

Moreover: The impacts of accelerating technological and social changes on education are enormous. Today’s stakeholders in our youths’ future must prepare them for futures that none of us can even dream are possible. We need to rethink and explore all the “invisible” (non-formal, non-certified, but equally relevant) ways of learning in a world where personal knowledge development, comprised of both tacit and explicit elements, is rapidly becoming more valuable than commodified, industrial-style information delivery. How can we create innovators, capable of leveraging their unique imaginations and creativity?

In the Invisible Learning project, we sought to research and share experiences and innovative perspectives, focused on rethinking strategies and innovative approaches to learn and unlearn continuously. We highlighted the importance of critical thinking of the roles of formal, informal, non-formal and serendipitous education at all levels – which can contribute to the creation of sustainable processes of learning, innovating and designing new cultures for a global society.

In the Invisible Learning paradigm, “just in case,” rote memorization is replaced with learning that is intended to be personally meaningful for all participants in the learning experience. Moreover, the application of knowledge toward innovative problem solving takes primacy over the regurgitation of previous knowledge or so-called “facts.”

Education in the Invisible Learning paradigm enables students to act on their knowledge, applying what they know to solve problems – including problems that have not been solved before. This contextual, purposive application of personal knowledge to create innovative solutions negates the value of non-innovation-producing regimes (i.e., standardized testing).

The purposive application of technologies can help. Our questions around educational improvement should therefore not be around what to learn, but rather about how we can learn. And, how we can make what we learned invisibly visible.

21 May 2012

Rethinking human capital development in Knowmad Society

By John W. Moravec, Ph.D.

Note: This text is adapted from the original Spanish-language text that I wrote for the first Chapter 1 in Invisible Learning (a book co-written with Cristóbal Cobo). An updated and expanded version of this text will also appear in the next volume, Knowmad Society, due for release later in 2012, and is being shared early to ignite discussion for the upcoming On the Horizon special issue on “Borderless Society.” (The call for papers is still open.)

This working paper presents a framework for conceptualizing changes in society, driven by the forces of globalization, transformations of knowledge society, and accelerating change. The framework is centered on three social paradigms, which Moravec (2008c) labels “Society 1.0,” “Society 2.0,” and “Society 3.0” — expressed as Industrial Society, Knowledge Society, and Knowmad Society. Society 1.0 reflects the norms and practices of pre-industrial to industrial civilization. Society 2.0 refers to the radical social transformations that we are experiencing today, largely due to technological change. The 3.0 or Knowmad Society points to a state of society that is in our near future, where accelerating technological change is projected to have huge transformative consequences. This text considers the human capital development consequences and necessary transformations in education to meet the needs of a rapidly transforming society, and looks into some of the challenges facing Knowmad Society in an era of accelerating change.

The paradoxical co-existence of “Education 1.0” in “Society 3.0”

Society 1.0

Society 1.0 refers to the agricultural to industrial-based society that was largely present through the 18th century through the end of the 20th century. In the early portion of this period, economic activity was centered on family-based enterprises. Children learned at home, and children worked at home. Kids and adults were engaged cross-generationally. Not only were children valuable contributors to the economy at all levels, but adults and kids learned from each other. This paradigm facilitated “learning by doing,” which was formally adopted by organizations such as 4-H, which embraced the principle that if you teach youth ideas and skills, they would, in turn, teach their parents (4-H, 2010).

The rise of the industrial economy saw growth in wage and salary-based enterprises. Kids began to work at low-level, and often dangerous jobs, until they were segregated from the workplace to maintain their welfare. Thus also began the industrialization of education, where, separated from the primary production economy, children were placed into an institutional mechanism where kids learned skills from adults (and not vice-versa), and eventually emerged from the system as “educated,” young adults, immediately employable for the industrial economy.

In Society 1.0, we interpreted data – leading to the information age. By and large, our relationships were hierarchical. That is, was easy to tell how we related with each other. Companies had reporting structures that were easy to decipher. And, we had siloed jobs and roles within organizations and communities. Moreover, we did everything we could to avoid chaos and ambiguity.Leading toward the end of the 20th century, this model worked fine. It was easy to understand. It was easily operationalized. And, it benefitted from an education system that produced workers for the industrial-modeled economy.

By the end of the 20th century, the industrialization of education and proliferation of meritocratic academic structures in the 1.0 paradigm all but eliminated the recognition of “learning by doing.” Moreover, this evolved norm generally provided socioeconomic advantages for those that successfully navigated the industrialized meritocracy (better jobs, better pay) than those who avoided it or did not survive the system .

Society 2.0

The appearance of Society 2.0 is associated with the emergence of the knowledge society that materialized in the 20th century (see esp. Drucker, 1969, 1985). Information needed to be interpreted, necessitating the creation of knowledge workers. However, as Polyani (1968) explains, the nature of knowledge, itself, is personal and is composed of tacit and explicit components. They combine in the creation of personally-constructed meanings that defy the absolute objectivity of Society 1.0’s industrial information model. Moreover, as social animals, humans engage in social networking activities and share their personal knowledge across ever complex systems. This growing ecosystem of personally-constructed meanings and values facilitated the creation of the field of knowledge management in the latter half of the 20th century, which attempted to manage the new elements of chaos and ambiguity related to personal knowledge that were inputted into organizational systems.

Advances in information and communications technologies (ICTs) facilitated the broadened production of socially-constructed meanings. Many of these advancements are made possible through the convergence of the Internet (which has become the symbol for all things networking – personal and technological) and globalization, opening potentials for globally-aware and globally-present social networks. Tools that harness ICTs are being used not only to share ideas, but also to create new interpretations. A few scholars (see, for example, Mahiri, 2004) recognize this a “cut-and-paste” culture. One potent example of this cultural shift is hip-hop, which remixes and reuses sounds, lyrics, and imagery to create new meanings that are as much unique and individual to the hip-hop artist as the creator and the original source works. Other examples include the products of “Web 2.0” tools (see esp. Cobo Romaní & Pardo Kuklinski, 2007, for a detailed list and discussion) that allow individuals to harness new social networks to remix and share ideas and media (e.g., blogs, wikis, and YouTube).

The mass availability of these tools also allows everyday people to participate in an expanded array of vocations and citizen engagement. For example, tools such as blogs, Twitter and YouTube allow for the formation of citizen journalists, who are able to directly compete with mainstream media at a miniscule fraction of the cost that mainstream media needs to develop and deliver content . The technologies also allow for the formation of citizen scientists. By donating computing processing time, non-scientifically trained individuals can search for signs of extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI@Home project), search for a cure for cancer (Folding@Home), and examine stellar particles retrieved from space (Stardust@Home). Likewise, the Audubon Society has long relied on its social network of professional and amateur birdwatchers to generate a statistically accurate estimate of birds within a given area. Furthermore, technologies allow for the greater democratization of markets, creating citizen capitalists that invest in a global market for ideas, talent, products, and other capital.

Social-orient ICTs carry constraints and limitations that forces individuals to transform how they think and act. For example, Twitter and mobile telephone short message services limit message sizes to 140 characters or less, forcing content producers to deliver clear, concise messages in limited space.

These transformations are leading to new questions for social and educational theorists that are still being debated – and research suggests that these changes are impacting the fundamental organization of the human brain (see esp. Small & Vorgan, 2008). Some key questions arising are: Does Society 2.0 dumb people down, or are we creating a new, hyper-connected, social super-intelligence? If technologically-savvy youth are composing their thoughts in 140 characters or less, are we facing a loss of literacy? In a world of Twitter, do we have any capacity for full-length novels? In a world with YouTube, can we sit through feature length films? Is technological change, paired with globalization, leading to a loss of our cultural heritages? And, finally, what is needed from education to remain relevant in a cut-and-paste society where information flows freely?

Society 3.0

“The future is already here – it’s just not evenly distributed.” – William Gibson (interviewed in Gladstone, 1999)

For most of us, Society 3.0 is in the future – possibly in the distant future. But, for a few people leading the change toward this proto-paradigm, it is very real. Three drivers are leading us to the formation of Society 3.0, which describes a world that is somewhere between “just around the corner” and “just beyond the horizon” of today’s state-of-the-art:

Accelerating technological and social change;
Continuing globalization and horizontalization of knowledge and relationships; and,
Innovation society fueled by knowmads.

Kurzweil (1999) postulates a theory he labels the Law of Accelerating Returns to describe the evolutionary process that leads to accelerating technological and social change:

As order exponentially increases, time exponentially speeds up (that is, the time interval between salient events grows shorter as time passes). (Kurzweil, 1999, p. 30)

Figure 1. Accelerating Technological Change

[Note. The J-curve of accelerating change illustrates the exponential development and exponentially reduced costs of technologies. One example is evident in the evolution of microprocessors, which follow Moore’s (1965) Law of doubling the number of transistors on integrated circuits every two years, while also reducing the costs of associated processing speed, memory capacities, etc. The inflection point on the graph is the approximate location of the Technological Singularity, at which point change occurs so rapidly that the human mind cannot imagine what will happen next. One way of thinking of the magnitude of accelerating change is that if Moore’s Law is followed for the next 600 years, a single microprocessor would have the computational equivalency of the known Universe (Krauss & Starkman, 2004).]

In other words, change is occurring rapidly, and the pace of change is increasing. Kurzweil’s idea is founded on the proposal that as technologies evolve, the technologies improve, costs decrease; and, in turn, the process of technological evolution advances and speeds itself up, creating a J-curve of exponential, accelerating change (see Figure 1, above). As technologies evolve, so will society (Morgan, 1877). This acceleration of change, however, is also expected to impact human imagination and foresight. Vinge (1993) terms the theoretical limit of human foresight and imagination (illustrated as the inflection point on the above graphic) as the Technological Singularity. As the rate of technological advancement increases, it will become more difficult for a human observer to predict or understand future technological advancements.

Given the rate of exponential advancement illustrated by Kurzweil (2005), the rate of technological advancements in the future may seem nearly simultaneous. At this point, Vinge and Kurzweil hypothesize society will reach a point labeled the Technological Singularity. Kurzweil further believes the Singularity will emerge as the complex, seemingly chaotic outcome of converging technologies (esp. nanotechnology, robots, computing, and the human integration of these technologies).

As previously noted, technological change facilitates social change. Near future technological advancements are therefore expected to ignite periods of social transformation that defies human imagination today.

The impacts of accelerating technological and social changes on education are enormous. Today’s stakeholders in our youths’ future must prepare them for futures that none of us can even dream are possible.

Continuing globalization is leading to a horizontalized diffusion of knowledge in domains that were previously siloed, creating heterarchical relationships, and providing new opportunities for knowledge to be applied contextually in innovative contexts. In learning contexts, this means that we are becoming not only co-learners, but also co-teachers as we co-constructively produce new knowledge and its applications.

Table 1 summarizes key differences between the three social paradigms that we explore in this book. In the shift from Society 1.0 to Society 3.0, basic relationships transform from linear, mechanistic and deterministic order to a new order that is highly non-linear, synergetic and design-oriented. The effects of accelerating change suggest that causality, itself, may seem to express anticausal characteristics, due to the near instantaneousness of events experienced by a society in a period of continuous, accelerating change. Therefore, how reality is contextualized (and contextually responded to) becomes much more important to citizens in Society 3.0 than it was in previous paradigms.

Table 1: Societies 1.0 through 3.0 across various domains

Knowmads in Society 3.0

A knowmad is what Moravec (2008a) terms a nomadic knowledge and innovation worker – that is, a creative, imaginative, and innovative person who can work with almost anybody, anytime, and anywhere. Moreover, knowmads are valued for the personal knowledge that they possess, and this knowledge gives them a competitive advantage. Industrial society is giving way to knowledge and innovation work. Whereas the industrialization of Society 1.0 required people to settle in one place to perform a very specific role or function, the jobs associated with knowledge and information workers have become much less specific in regard to task and place. Moreover, technologies allow for these new paradigm workers to work either at a specific place, virtually, or any blended combination. Knowmads can instantly reconfigure and recontextualize their work environments, and greater mobility is creating new opportunities. Consider, for example, coffee shops. These environments have become the workplace of choice for many knowmads. What happens when the investment banker sitting next to the architect have a conversation? What new ideas, products, and services might be created?

Knowmads:

Are not restricted to a specific age.
Build their personal knowledge through explicit information gathering and tacit experiences, and leverage their personal knowledge to produce new ideas.
Are able to contextually apply their ideas and expertise in various social and organizational configurations.
Are highly motivated to collaborate, and are natural networkers, navigating new organizations, cultures, and societies.
Purposively use new technologies to help them solve problems and transcend geographical limitations.
Are open to sharing what they know, and invite the open access to information, knowledge and expertise from others.
Can unlearn as quickly as they learn, adopting new ideas and practices as necessary.
Thrive in non-hierarchical networks and organizations.
Develop habits of mind and practice to learn continuously.
Are not afraid of failure.

(Note: List inspired by Cobo, 2008)

When we compare the list of skills required of knowmads to the outcomes of mainstream education, we wonder: What are we educating for? Are we educating to create factory workers and bureaucrats? Or, are we educating to create innovators, capable of leveraging their imagination and creativity?

Sidebar

Invisible learning a new expressions of human capital development in Knowmad Society

Knowmad Society necessitates the transformation from industrial paradigm, “banking” pedagogies (see esp. Freire, 1968) that transmit “just in case” information and knowledge (i.e., memorization of the world’s capitals) toward modes that utilize the invisible spaces to develop personally- and socially- meaningful, actionable knowledge. There is growing recognition that people with unique, key knowledge and skills (i.e., knowmads) are critical for the success of modern organizations. Godin (2010) argues successful people in today’s organizations serve as “linchpins.” From an interview with Goden by Hyatt (2010), Godin states:

The linchpin insists on making a difference, on leading, on connecting with others and doing something I call art. The linchpin is the indispensable one, the one the company can’t live without. This is about humanity, not compliance.

In their book, The Element, Robinson & Aronica (2009) interview many people who have experienced success in their careers, and identified that the people they spoke with found their “element” – that is, their success was largely due to the fact that they did something they enjoyed in addition to being good at it. This runs contrary to the “just in case” industrial model of education, and suggests that if we enable more people to pursue their passions and support them, they can achieve success.

In the 3.0 proto-paradigm, the inherent chaos and ambiguity related to tremendous technological and social changes call for a resurgence of “learning by doing.” In a sense, we are creating the future as we go along. As co-learners and co-teachers, we are co-responsible for helping each other find our own elements along our pathways of personal, knowmadic development.

How do we measure learning in the invisible spaces?

The cult of educational measurement

A key concern for policymakers and other stakeholders in education is, what is being learned? In an education system focused on industrial production, this is an important quality control issue.

The linearity of the industrial paradigm thrives on mechanical processes. For example, groups of learners are expected to read books progressively, chapter-by-chapter, and recite the information and “facts” they acquired linearly through memorization. In this paradigm, the use of summative evaluation (i.e., tests) is de rigueur.

Throughout the world, we have adopted this culture of industrial learning and evaluation en masse, and created a cult of educational measurement to support it. In the United States, this is manifested through the testing requirements of the No Child Left Behind Act. In Spain, the cult is evident in the filtering processes that lead to the Prueba de Acceso. In the United Kingdom, it is expressed within the National Curriculum (Education Reform Act of 1988). And so on.

With policies with names like “No Child Left Behind,” it is hard to disagree: is the alternative to leave children behind? The unfortunate reality, however, is that in these industrial policies we tend to leave many children behind. These industrial-modeled, testing-centric regimes produce exactly the wrong products for the 21st Century, but is appropriate for what the world needed between the 19th century through 1950. As Robinson (2001) and others have argued, these fractured memorization models oppose the creative, synthetic thinking required for work in the new economy and effective citizenship.

Leapfrogging beyond the cult of educational measurement

Focus on how to learn, not what to learn.

In the Invisible Learning proto-paradigm, rote, “just in case” memorization is replaced with learning that is intended to be personally meaningful for all participants in the learning experience. Moreover, the application of knowledge toward innovative problem solving takes primacy over the regurgitation of previous knowledge or “facts.” In essence, as discussed in the previous chapter, students very much become knowledge brokers (Meyer, 2010).

Moreover, the Invisible Learning paradigm enables students to act on their knowledge, applying what they know to solve problems –including problems that have not been solved before. This contextual, purposive application of personal knowledge to create innovative solutions negates the value of non-innovation-producing standardized testing.

The “learning by doing” aspect of Invisible Learning that focuses on how to learn rather than what to learn suggests that measurement or evaluation needs to be outcomes-based in the same way that we evaluate innovations:

What happened?
Did something new happen? Something unexpected?
Was there a positive benefit?
What can others learn from the experience?

Although there is a large body of literature supporting the need for formative assessments in education (see, for example, Armstrong, 1985; Marzano, 2003; Stiggins, 2008; Stiggins, Arter, Chappuis, & Chappuis, 2007), as well as a rich educational literature theory base that suggests we need to move toward learner-centered learning (perhaps the most vocal being Dewey, 1915; Freire, 2000), summative evaluations still persist in formal learning environments that present little value to the learner. Strategies to bring the informal into the formal are already present and widely adopted in business, industry, and, ironically, within some teacher education programs.

For example, Pekka Ihanainen (2010) explains that Finnish vocational teacher education, for example, is built on a dialogical professional development model. Knowledge and expertise areas of the teachers in training are identified and compared with their occupational competency requirements and goals. Following this assessment, career development trajectories and educational pathways are developed. The system is not designed to determine only how teachers in training meet state requirements, but also relates to their individual interests and professional development goals.

Finally, releasing ourselves from the cult of measurement requires faith and confidence that we are always learning. As we will discuss in the following chapters, as human beings, we are always engaged in learning– it is one of our most natural activities.

Implementing Invisible Learning: Making the invisible visible

The difficulties in mainstreaming Invisible Learning in Western education are daunting. Formal systems are deeply entrenched. Governments believe in the formal approach (it looks good on paper and within state and national budgets). Entire industries (i.e., textbooks, educational measurement) are built around it. And, the scale of the industrialization of education leaves many people wondering if it’s worth fighting against.

The system is further reinforced, by design, to change at a glacial pace. While markets can transform and reinvent themselves virtually overnight, governments cannot. They are designed to be slow and deliberative. As a result, they tend to lag significantly and react to change more often than they proactively design orpreact to beneficial changes.

Paradoxically, despite being key components of systems most responsible for developing human capital and human development futures, education is designed to change even slower. Educational institutions and systems report to governments, respond to governmental policies, and align their programs to satisfy requirements and funding formulae established by legislative bodies. Moreover, these criteria, including establishing what to teach, depends on who sits on what committee at any given time. By relying on personalities, political gamesmanship, and feedback-looped special interests from the formal educational industrial complex, many question if the system has perhaps become too large, too slow, and unfocused.

The problem is, the emerging pressures of Society 3.0 require educational transformation today. Schools need to develop students that can design future jobs, industries and knowledge fields that we have not dreamed of. Schools need to operate as futurists, not laggards.

Is educational reform worth fighting for?

No.

Rather, it’s time to start anew. As Sir Ken Robinson eloquently states, we need a revolution, not reform (TED, 2010).

Revolutions are difficult to ignite. An entire genre of literature that Carmen Tschofen terms “change manifestos” has emerged in education that is rich in calls for change, but falls flat on actually creating the change it calls for (Moravec, 2010). The system, perhaps, has too much inertia. As Harkins and Moravec (2006) suggest in their “Leapfrog University” memo series to the University of Minnesota, perhaps a parallel approach is necessary.

Rather than fighting the system, students, parents, communities, and other life-long learners can invest in establishing parallel, new schools and/or networks of learning, discovering, innovating, and sharing. And some communities are already leading the way with innovative initiatives. For example:

Shibuya University Network (Japan): “Yasuaki Sakyo, president of Shibuya University, believes that education should be lifelong. At Shibuya, courses are free and open to all; classes take place in shops, cafes and outside; and anyone can be a teacher” (CNN, 2007). In essence, the entire community and its environment have become the co-learners, co-teachers, and classroom.
The Bank of Common Knowledge (Banco Común de Conocimientos, Spain) “is a pilot experience dedicated to the research of social mechanisms for the collective production of contents, mutual education, and citizen participation. It is a laboratory platform where we explore new ways of enhancing the distribution channels for practical and informal knowledge, as well as how to share it” (Bank of Common Knowledge, n.d.).
TED.com (Technology, Entertainment, Design, USA) challenges lecture-based education by creating “a clearinghouse that offers free knowledge and inspiration from the world’s most inspired thinkers, and also a community of curious souls to engage with ideas and each other” (TED, n.d.).

Redefining human capital development

To move forward in making Invisible Learning visible, we need to engage in conversations on what futures we want to create. We need to clarify our visions of the future. In China, India, and throughout much of the developing world, the vision is simple: Catch up to the West through planned development. But, in the United States, Europe, and much of the rest of the Western world, concrete visions of where we want to be in the future are absent. We assert that we either do not know where we want to be in the future or we lack the foresight to imagine ourselves in a future that is very different from today.

The consequence is that we are not making investments into our human capital development systems that will enable us to meet needs set by future challenges. We need to prepare our youth and other members of society for a future and workforce needs that we cannot imagine. Moreover, given the potential for today’s youth to be engaged productively in a “post-Singularity” era, it is important to assist them in the development of skills and habits of mind (i.e., the Leapfrog Institutes’ liberal skills outlined in the “Leapfrog” memo series archived at Education Futures). that will foster life-long learning and the innovative applications of their knowledge.

This lack of vision –and acting on it– impacts not only education, but also other areas of our socioeconomic wellbeing. Bob Herbert (2010) recently wrote for the New York Times on the United States’ new unfound willingness to invest in ideas that could increase potentials for future growth and prosperity:

The United States is not just losing its capacity to do great things. It’s losing its soul. It’s speeding down an increasingly rubble-strewn path to a region where being second rate is good enough. (Herbert, 2010)

As organizations, communities, and nations, we need to set visions for the futures we will co-create, and act upon them. Throughout the remainder of this volume, we explore some of the methods individuals, teams, and organizations may employ to help develop these visions of the future.

Using technology purposively

When engaged in conversations about invisible learning or other innovations in education, there is a tendency for people to gravitate their thoughts toward technology as if it can serve as a “silver bullet” to slay the allegorical werewolf of the persistence of the Education 1.0 model. Innovation in education does not mean “technology.” Douglas Adams (1999) elaborated on the challenges of defining the purpose of the Internet:

Another problem with the net is that it’s still ‘technology’, and ‘technology’, as the computer scientist Bran Ferren memorably defined it, is ‘stuff that doesn’t work yet.’ We no longer think of chairs as technology, we just think of them as chairs. But there was a time when we hadn’t worked out how many legs chairs should have, how tall they should be, and they would often ‘crash’ when we tried to use them. Before long, computers will be as trivial and plentiful as chairs (and a couple of decades or so after that, as sheets of paper or grains of sand) and we will cease to be aware of the things. In fact I’m sure we will look back on this last decade and wonder how we could ever have mistaken what we were doing with them for ‘productivity.’ (Adams, 1999)

Moreover, we use the term “technology” to describe new tools that we do not understand. In other words, the purposive uses of “technology” are not well defined. As a result, in educational contexts, we often take the best technologies and squander the opportunities they afford us. Roger Schank (in Molist, 2010) puts it bluntly:

It’s the same garbage, but placed differently. Schools select new technologies and ruin them. For example, when television came, every school put one in each classroom, but used it to do exactly the same things as before. The same with computers today. Oh, yes, we have e-larning! What does it mean? Then they give the same terrible course, but online, using computers in a stupid way.(Molist, 2010)

Conversely, the Invisible Learning approach to technology is purposive, pragmatic and centered at improving the human experience at its core. Specifically, this means that it is:

Well-defined: The purpose and applications of particular technologies need to be specified. Bringing in technologies for the sake of using technologies will likely lead to their misuse, underuse, and/or the creation of unintended outcomes.
Focused on developing mindware: The focus of technologies should not be on hardware or software, but on how they enhance our mindware – that is, they focus is placed on how technologies can support our imaginations, creativity, and help us innovate.
Social: The use of technologies is often a social experience and their social applications should be addressed. This includes the leverage of social media tools for learning such as Facebook, Twitter, etc., which are commonly blocked from formal education settings.
Experimental: Embraces the concept of “learning by doing,” and allows for trial and error which can lead to successes and the occasional failure – but does not create failures.
Continuously evolving: As an area for “beta testing” new ideas and approaches to problems, it is continuously in a state of remixing and transformation. As society evolves continuously, so must our learning and sharing.

Who gets to leapfrog to Knowmad Society?

Lastly, a problem facing Invisible Learning is one of equity and equality. Is it appropriate for a select group of “invisible learners” to leapfrog ahead of peers who may be trapped within the paradigm of “education 1.0?” If 1% of the population benefits from Invisible Learning, what should we do about the other 99%? Should they not have the right to leapfrog ahead, too?

We believe so. But, we also recognize the incredible inertia mainstream Education 1.0 possesses. Given rates of accelerating technological, social and economic change, we cannot wait. The revolution in learning and human capital development needs to begin now. This may mean starting out small, working parallel with entrenched systems, but it also means we need to lead by example.

References

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Adams, D. N. (1999). How to stop worrying and learn to love the Internet Retrieved Ocotber 10, 2010, from http://www.douglasadams.com/dna/19990901-00-a.html
Armstrong, J. S. (1985). Long range forecasting: From crystal ball to computer (2nd ed.). New York: Wiley.
Bank of Common Knowledge. (n.d.). About the Bank of Common Knowledge (BCK) Retrieved October 5, 2010, from http://www.bancocomun.org/Wiki/queEsBcc/
CNN. (2007). Interview: Yasuaki Sakyo Retrieved October 5, 2010, from http://edition.cnn.com/2007/TECH/11/01/sakyo.qa/
Cobo Romaní, C., & Pardo Kuklinski, H. (2007). Planeta Web 2.0: Inteligencia colectiva o medios fast food Retrieved from http://planetaweb2.net
Cobo, C. (2008, April 22). Skills for a Knowledge/Mind Worker Passport (19 commandments). Retrieved from /2008/04/22/skills-for-a-knowledgemind-worker-passport-19-commandments/
Cross, J. (2003). Informal learning – the other 80%, from http://www.internettime.com/Learning/The Other 80%.htm
Dewey, J. (1915). The school and society (Revised ed.). Chicago: University of Chicago.
Drucker, P. F. (1969). The age of discontinuity: Guidelines to our changing society. New York: Harper & Row.
Drucker, P. F. (1985). Innovation and entrepreneurship: Practice and principles (1st ed.). New York: Harper & Row.
Freire, P. (2000). Pedagogy of the oppressed (30th anniversary ed.). New York: Continuum.
Gladstone, B. (Writer). (1999). The science in science fiction [Radio broadcast], Talk of the nation: National Public Radio.
Godin, S. (2010). Linchpin: Are you indispensible? New York: Portfolio.
Harkins, A. M., & Moravec, J. W. (2006). Building a Leapfrog University v5.0 Retrieved October 5, 2010, from /2006/10/12/building-a-leapfrog-university-v50/
Herbert, B. (2010). Policy at its worst, New York Times, p. A21. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/09/opinion/09herbert.html
Hyatt, M. (2010, January 26). Book notes: An interview with Seth Godin. Retrieved from http://michaelhyatt.com/book-notes-an-interview-with-seth-godin.html
Ihanainen, P. (2010, September 4). [Personal communication on vocational teacher education in Finland].
Krauss, L. M., & Starkman, G. D. (2004). Universal limits on computation. http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0404510v2
Kurzweil, R. (1999). The age of spiritual machines: When computers exceed human intelligence. New York: Viking.
Kurzweil, R. (2005). The Singularity is near: When humans transcend biology. New York: Viking.
Mahiri, J. (2004). What they don’t learn in school: Literacy in the lives of urban youth. New York: P. Lang.
Marzano, R. J. (2003). What works in schools: Translating research into action. Alexandria, Va.: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.
Meyer, M. (2010). The rise of the knowledge broker. Science Communication, 32(1), 118-127. doi: 10.1177/1075547009359797
Molist, M. (2010, February 25). Schank: “El ‘e-learning’ actual es la misma basura, pero en diferente sitio”, Interview, El País. Retrieved from http://www.elpais.com/articulo/portada/Schank/e-learning/actual/misma/basura/diferente/sitio/elpeputec/20100225elpcibpor_6/Tes
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18 May 2012

Review: Creating innovators (by Tony Wagner)

By John W. Moravec, Ph.D.

Book: Creating innovators: The making of young people who will change the world
Author: Tony Wagner (with video content produced by Robert A. Compton)
Publisher: Scribner, a division of Simon & Schuster (2012)

In Creating innovators, Harvard University’s Tony Wagner sets out to describe the crisis facing education in a society that requires innovative workers and thinkers. He presents a systems perspective, and explores what parents, teachers, and employers must do to develop the capacities of young people to become innovators. To make it happen, he argues we must invest more in enabling play, passion, and purpose in the lives of learners — and focus less on industrial modes of production (i.e., refocusing away from standardized tests).

Featuring interviews with innovators, thought leaders, and people working to make change happen in schools, the book does not serve to produce new knowledge. It instead serves as a primer to what innovation is, why it is important for nations, and some of the best practices we can engage in now.

As a nice addition, the book incorporates in-line video content that can be viewed through a mobile device. While the book claims they use QR codes, the scannable codes appear in a proprietary Microsoft format, and require readers to download an app from Microsoft. For users of non-Microsoft platforms (i.e., iOS or Android devices), this could present problems in the future. Thankfully, videos will be made available at the book’s website, creatinginnovators.com.

While the book provides a nice survey into some of the thinking of innovation in education, it revolves around legacy models of what schools are, and falls flat when it looks toward the future of innovation as it still relies on these old structures. Wagner would have done better to ponder what a continuously innovative society looks like — and might even question whether we need “schools” any more.

By keeping a sharp focus on the old conceptualizations of education, Wagner focuses the bulk of his discussions on what to learn (i.e., STEM), rather than how to learn. Perhaps by exploring the how issues, the book could have provided critical insight into which skills and competencies are critical for success in a society that is driven by continuous, disruptive innovation. Play, passion, and purpose are just fine (and alliterate well), but their usefulness could be constructed within a broader framework (i.e., together with soft skills development) that enables contextually beneficial expressions of personal knowledge.

The bottom line: Creating innovators is an enjoyable primer for those who are just catching on to the innovation bandwagon, but it is not a jumping point for developing new ideas and practices that will transform our education futures.

With the publisher’s permission, here is an excerpt:

How Do We Develop Young People to Become Innovators?

In the past, our country has produced innovators more by accident than by design. Rarely do entrepreneurs or innovators talk about how their schooling or their places of work — or even their parents — developed their talents or encouraged their aspirations. Three of the most innovative entrepreneurs of the last half century — Edwin Land, the inventor of the Polaroid instant camera; Bill Gates; and Mark Zuckerberg, founder and CEO of Facebook — had to drop out of Harvard to pursue their ideas. Apple’s Steve Jobs; Michael Dell of Dell Computer; Larry Ellison, founder of the software giant Oracle; and the inventor Dean Kamen are other famous high-tech college dropouts.

So what would it mean if we were to intentionally develop the entrepreneurial and innovative talents of all young people — to nurture their initiative, curiosity, imagination, creativity, and collaborative skills, as well as their analytical abilities — along with essential qualities of character such as persistence, empathy, and a strong moral foundation? What can parents do to nurture these qualities? What do the most effective teachers and college professors do, and what can they — and the young people themselves — tell us about how schools and colleges need to change to teach these qualities? Finally, what can we learn from those who successfully mentor aspiring entrepreneurial innovators? These are the driving questions in this book.

How Do We Develop Young People to Become Innovators?

If we agree on the need to develop the capabilities of many more youth to be innovators, and if we agree that many of the qualities of an innovator can be nurtured and learned, the question now becomes, what do we do? Where do we start as parents, teachers, mentors, and employers?

Encourage Play

Research shows that human beings are born with an innate desire to explore, experiment, and imagine new possibilities — to innovate.

How do children learn such skills? In a word — through play.

And it’s not just infants and children who learn through play. Joost Bonsen, who is an alumnus of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and currently serves as a lecturer in the world-famous MIT Media Lab, talked about the importance of the famous tradition of pranks at the university.

“Being innovative is central to being human.” Bonsen told me. “We’re curious and playful animals, until it’s pounded out of us. Look at the tradition of pranks here at MIT. What did it take to put a police car on a dome that was fifteen stories high (one of most famous MIT student pranks), with a locked trapdoor being the only access? It was an incredible engineering feat. To pull that off was a systems problem, and it took tremendous leadership and teamwork.

“Pranks reinforce the cultural ethos of creative joy.” Joost added. “Getting something done in a short period of time with no budget, and challenging circumstances. It’s glorious and epic. They didn’t ask for permission. Not even forgiveness.”

These students were playing — just doing something for the fun of it. Play, then, is part of our human nature and an intrinsic motivation.

Encourage Passion

Passion is familiar to all of us as an intrinsic motivation for doing things. The passion to explore, to learn something new, to understand something more deeply; to master something difficult. We see these passions all around us and have likely experienced them for ourselves.

In more than one hundred and fifty interviews for this book — lengthy conversations with innovators and their parents, teachers, and mentors — passionwas the most frequently recurring word.

Encourage Purpose

Pure passion, by itself, is not enough to sustain the motivation to do difficult things and to persevere — in love or in work! In my research, I observe that young innovators almost invariably develop a passion to learn or do something as adolescents, but their passions evolve through learning and exploration into something far deeper, more sustainable, and trustworthy — purpose.

The sense of purpose can take many forms. But the one that emerged most frequently in my interviews and in the interviews by the authors of “the Innovator’s DNA” is the desire to somehow “make a difference”

In the lives of young innovators whom I interviewed, I discovered a consistent link and developmental arc in their progression from play to passion to purpose. They played a great deal — but their play was frequently far less structured than most children’s, and they had opportunities to explore, experiment, and discover through trial and error — to take risks and to fall down. Through this kind of more creative play as children, these young innovators discovered a passion. As they pursued their passions, their interests changed and took surprising turns. They developed new passions, which, over time, evolved into a deeper and more mature sense of purpose — a kind of shared adult play.

These young innovators did not learn these things alone. They received help from parents, teachers, and mentors along the way. Their evolution as innovators was almost invariably facilitated by at least one adult — and often several. What these parents, teachers, and mentors did that was so helpful may surprise you. Each, in his or her own quiet way, is often following a different, less conventional path in his or her role as a parent, teacher, or mentor. They acted differently so that the young people with whom they interacted could think differently.

Note: The publisher provided a copy of the book for review. Please read our review policy for more details on how we review products and services.

11 Jan 2012

Nine key characteristics of knowmads in Society 3.0

By John W. Moravec, Ph.D.

A knowmad is what I have previously termed a nomadic knowledge and innovation worker – that is, a creative, imaginative, and innovative person who can work with almost anybody, anytime, and anywhere. Moreover, knowmads are valued for the personal knowledge that they possess, and this knowledge gives them a competitive advantage. Industrial society is giving way to knowledge and innovation work. Whereas the industrialization of Society 1.0 required people to settle in one place to perform a very specific role or function, the jobs associated with knowledge and information workers have become much less specific in regard to task and place. Moreover, technologies allow for these new paradigm workers to work either at a specific place, virtually, or any blended combination. Knowmads can instantly reconfigure and recontextualize their work environments, and greater mobility is creating new opportunities.

In Invisible Learning, Cristóbal Cobo and I presented a “passport of skills for a knowmad” (p. 57). Refining the list a bit, I am pleased to present an update with nine key characteristics of knowmads in Society 3.0:

Knowmads…

Are not restricted to a specific age. (see note, below)
Build their personal knowledge through explicit information gathering and tacit experiences, and leverage their personal knowledge to produce new ideas.
Are able to apply their ideas and expertise contextually in various social and organizational configurations.
Are highly motivated to collaborate, and are natural networkers, navigating new organizations, cultures, and societies.
Purposively use new technologies to help them solve problems and transcend geographical limitations.
Are open to sharing what they know, and invite the open access to information, knowledge and expertise from others.
Develop habits of mind and practice to learn continuously, and can unlearn as quickly as they learn, adopting new ideas and practices as necessary.
Thrive in non-hierarchical networks and organizations.
Are not afraid of failure — and see their failures as learning opportunities.

The remixing of places and social relationships is also impacting education. Students in Knowmad Society should learn, work, play, and share in almost any configuration. But there is little evidence to support any claim that education systems are moving toward a knowmad-enabled paradigm. When we compare the list of skills required of knowmads to the outcomes of mainstream education, I wonder: What are we educating for? Are we educating to create factory workers and bureaucrats? Or, are we educating to create innovators, capable of leveraging their imagination and creativity?

These questions –and more– will be explored further in the book Knowmad Society, which will be released later this year.

Note: Due to current social structures that limit participation in the new society (i.e., access to pooled health insurance), the largest growth in knowmadic workers today are among youth and older workers.

09 Jan 2012

Leadership and Entrepreneurship: "Knowmads challenge all structures"

By John W. Moravec, Ph.D.

De Baak‘s Ralph Blom wrote up a short interview with me for last month’s issue of Leadership and Entrepreneurship.

My favorite bit:

What skills are needed in a society 3.0?

“Because everybody is in it together it is not bounded by a specific generation. Nobody has done this before, there are no role models. We all have to co-create this together. Knowmads are highly engaged, creative, innovative, collaborative and highly motivated. They adapt fast in new situations and contextualize ideas due to situations. So schools need to find out how we can learn skills in motivation, creative orientation, being friendly, and an ungoing mindset on always keep up with technologies. All of us have to learn to share without geographical limitation. We have to create global footprints, go beyond the small communities and learn how to engage people all over the world in open and flat knowledge networks. A big cultural mindshift is needed, we have to start thinking that learning is everywhere, always and naturally. It is quit normal that even the biggest leader says: “Can you help me learn that?”. The most successful entrepreneurs do it all the time: “I don’t know how to do this. I have this idea. I want to get it to the next level. Can you help figure this out?” Innovation will not come from software and new technologies. It’s about mindware. That is our imagination, our creativity.”

Read the full interview on De Baak’s website.

creativity

Viewing posts tagged creativity

Cheating the death of imagination: Teaching the unknowable

Bob Dylan and the genius of context

Genius is not created by the institution; genius is fostered by the context in which the institution interfaces with the community.

Lessons from the toilet II: Captive audience

As teachers, we often do not have control over what we must teach. But, we do have some control over how students engage in learning.

I theorize that students who are held captive by teacher-driven, teacher-centered, unengaging, uninteresting, and irrelevant content deal with their forced captivity in one of three ways: misbehavior, compliance, or a mix of both.

Designing the future of research libraries and special libraries in Knowmad Society

Abstract

Introduction

The challenge of Knowmad Society

Challenges knowledge-based organizations face in Knowmad Society

Invisible learning in the age of knowmads

A leadership framework for libraries to navigate a rapidly changing society

An example pathway for maximizing organizational creativity and innovation capital

In lieu of conclusion, spaghetti needs meatballs

References

Creative classrooms in Patagonia

Learning in Knowmad Society: Making invisible learning visible

Rethinking human capital development in Knowmad Society

The paradoxical co-existence of “Education 1.0” in “Society 3.0”

Society 1.0

Society 2.0

Society 3.0

Knowmads in Society 3.0

Invisible learning a new expressions of human capital development in Knowmad Society

How do we measure learning in the invisible spaces?

The cult of educational measurement

Leapfrogging beyond the cult of educational measurement

Implementing Invisible Learning: Making the invisible visible

Is educational reform worth fighting for?

Redefining human capital development

Using technology purposively

Who gets to leapfrog to Knowmad Society?

References

Review: Creating innovators (by Tony Wagner)

Nine key characteristics of knowmads in Society 3.0

Leadership and Entrepreneurship: "Knowmads challenge all structures"

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