Last Friday and Saturday (10/21 and 22) the Board had what I feel is the tremendous honor of participating in the first 9 hours of the District’s Visioning process. The goal is for Spring Branch to complete the development of Five Year Educational, Long Range Facilities, and Technology Plans by June 2006. The Visioning process involves the Board, staff, community members and students (over 60 people) looking at ways to define what we as a District want for our students.
So you wonder why I’d be energized by spending 9 hours on a Friday afternoon and Saturday morning on this? Well, under Dr. Klussmann’s leadership, we were able to bring in educational futurists Ian Jukes and Ted McClain. When these two gentlemen speak of the future, they aren’t talking about the 22nd century – they are talking about today’s kindergarten students – the Class of ’18.
I have felt a sense of urgency on the issues Jukes and McClain discussed since I read Tom Friedman’s The World is Flat which I have discussed previously in several posts you can review here. What I learned on Friday and Saturday transforms my sense of urgency to a sense of immediacy. I invite you to get energized the way I have by visiting Mr. Jukes’ site.
Included on his site are a number of handouts that can be downloaded including this one that is an extension of Windows on the Future written by Jukes and McClain.
Windows on the Future Thinking About Tomorrow Today By Ian Jukes and Ted McCain
Synopsis By carefully explaining the significance of seven exponential trends (Moore's Law, Photonics, the Internet, InfoWhelm, Biotechnology, Nanotechnology, and the Neuroinformatics) this paper profoundly challenges your fundamental assumptions about the world we live and the future that awaits us. It then explores the impact these trends will have on our lives personally and professionally asking you to stand back from the trends and consider how they will affect our children, learning institutions, the classroom, the curriculum, the nature of learning, the nature of instruction and even our fundamental definitions of intelligence. Today, in a world where change is the constant, you can’t trust your eyes. As a result, the implications of global trends can only be understood as part of the continuum from where they have come from to where they are heading.
The paper then considers how these changes will affect the classroom, the curriculum, learning, instruction and the measurement of achievement. It identifies the shift in curriculum and thinking that will be necessary to equip students for success in the brave new world of the 21st century, and discusses what this signifies for education, specifically in terms of our staff development models.
How can schools prepare students for this world? How do we effectively engage learners so that they can not only perform exceptionally well on state exams, but also simultaneously learn the critical twenty-first century literacies needed to excel in both school and life?
It then takes a pragmatic look at current teacher practices and why they are becoming increasingly out of sync with our rapidly changing world; and identifies several principles and processes that transcend the new technologies. Participants will come away from the presentation with a clear understanding of how to meet both their curricular goals, as well as prepare students to meet the new realities of the 21st Century. Included is an overview of the 7-layered curriculum model content, process, tools, school to career, school to community, school to home, and contiguous assessment) as well as a variety of resources to support the transition to this new model. Participants should come prepared to have many of their present assumptions about education challenged. Counseling will be provided.
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