Sunday, June 01, 2008

5 Socio-Technology Trends That Change Everything...

I have a chance to express my long-held belief that there is indeed something truly different about the 21st century from the past, that we've entered one of those markers in the history of civilization we now see in retrospect as a true "discontinuity" - the "inventions" of language, writing, printing, the modern "academy," the scientific method, the Renaissance, and the Industrial Age. And so, with a cohort of thinkers, I'll be contributing to a book to be edited by Heidi Hayes Jacobs and published, hopefully later this year, by ASCD.

The working title of my contribution is "Five Socio-Technology Trends That Change Everything in Teaching & Learning." My thesis is based on the idea that new technologies and the social behaviors they stimulate are literally rewiring our ability to learn in new ways, and that "curriculum" in the 21st century must respond by shedding its industrial age markings (left brain linear proclivities) in favor of creative, critical thinking models that are sustainable in an age of knowledge abundance.