Christopher D. Sessums :: Blog :: Keeping Up with Technological Change: Has the future arrived too soon?

Here’s another take on the meme “changing teachers, changing minds.”

In a recent interview futurist Alvin Toffler talks about de-synchronization, that is, the disconnect between the rapid pace of technological change and the slow pace at which people and institutions adapt.

Toffler notes:
Changing the social structure is much more complicated than developing new bits of software. Bits and bytes don’t have vested interests, but people do.

He goes on argue that if this gap between technological and social change is not closed sooner than later, we will witness “institutional Katrinas – or, rather, equivalents to the tragic response to Hurricane Katrina… in every conceivable field.”

While not an optimistic view, Toffler’s critique offers a dose of realism (mixed with the sounds of Gabriel’s horn) that is often overlooked by institutional managers and administrators.

Part of this issue of de-synchronization can be associated with the narrow range of alternative organizational forms that those in power tend to be ignorant. Toffler suggests that there are an infinite number of ways that human beings can organize themselves for collective behavior and that we should be brainstorming and designing these alternatives sooner than later.

Sounds reasonable enough. So what next?

Toffler argues, to some degree, that this de-synchronous-ness can be addressed through the current nonmoney DIY (do it yourself) economy that has been promulgated by advancing digital technologies (Can you say Web 2.0?) and the advent of the prosumer – the producer and consumer of products and services outside the monetary economy. Toffler suggests that the interaction between the nonmoney, prosumer economy and the conventional money economy are two parts to the “wealth system” which pass value back and forth. For example, blogs and open source technologies add significant value to the money economy, and as such, this new cyberculture permits “prosumers to create value and rapidly disseminate it across the globe, where others find ways to commercialize it.” Think Yahoo, Google, Facebook, MySpace, and FedEx. Of course, the prosumer economy has its limits, but it does offer people a means for adopting ideas and actions to better suit their situation. Think EduGlu, mash-ups, OpenOffice, Moodle, or Linux.

Much of how organizations are managed is through what Toffler calls “obsoledge” – ideas and assumptions that are out dated and no longer appropriate. Many businesses, schools, and educational institutions are prime examples of obsoledge management and thus continue to lead us into the de-synchronous abyss so familiar agents of change.

As such there is a certain feeling of an impending implosion. We are familiar with school teachers struggling to retain relevancy, working from dated textbooks, while students Google from their cell phones. Toffler notes that while this just-in-time delivery and access to knowledge is important, it also means that “the temporal tolerances get smaller. It makes the system more sensitive to disruption.” And again, we can easily see and feel the de-synchronization when recounting stories of educators “not getting it,” that is, understanding the value of experimenting and adopting web technologies.

Time and Knowledge

On a similar note, Toffler remarks that time and knowledge are two areas that are under-studied and poorly conceived in both business and education:

Knowledge differs dramatically from any other resource that we’re accustomed to working with. For example, it is inherently non-rival. You and a million other people can use the same chunk of knowledge without diminishing it. It is nonlinear. Tiny insights can yield huge outputs…. Knowledge is promiscuous. It mates with other knowledge. And the more there is, the more numerous and varied the possible useful combinations. And it can be stored in smaller and smaller spaces” (my emphasis).

These subtle observations have far reaching implications that are overlooked in many ways, especially in the field of education. In my experience I have seen many educators spend more time concentrating on facts and figures (i.e., forms) without spending much time looking at how knowledge actually works (i.e., its functions). Finding the balance, the appropriate mix between form and function, seems to be a reasonable goal that should be negotiated by all members of a particular community. However, changing the social structure of teaching and learning, like changing the structure of businesses in general, is much easier said than done.

Beyond sounding the trumpets, what can we do to affect positive changes in our schools?

While de-synchronization may seem to be a pessimistic way to view our collective situation, perhaps such dissonance provides a starting point for us to explore and address the social and technological gap. My main concern is that without good information and strong leadership such dissonance can push people in the wrong direction leading to quick fixes, rushed decisions, and jumping from the frying pan into the fire (Think the four blind men and the elephant).

 
Time Out

As I mentioned in an earlier post, perhaps what educational institutions need is a time out, time to reflect on where they are and where they want to go to maintain relevancy in an economy where the value of many institutions is simply accreditation. I’ve never met an active educator who said that she or he had enough time to do what needed to be done. What does that say about the focus of our educational institutions? What does that say about our priorities? Are the activities being promulgated by schools authentic or are they simply busy work? (Is busy work authentic? That is, is asking people to do repetitive, mindless work in school similar to what many adults do for a living?)

The notion of the educational prosumer is worth exploring in more detail. The Flat Classroom Project, telling the new story of education, and alternative educational enterprises are clearly a step in the right direction in taking advantage of new ways of thinking about teaching and learning. The transformation is far from complete, but at least people are heading in the right direction.

I have spent the last several months looking at alternative ways for educators to work together to re-assess their practice. I am planning on sharing this research soon as a means of providing alternative organizational forms that can address social and technological gaps in teaching and learning. Of course, no new form can make a difference unless educators are willing to reflect upon their practice both critically and honestly. Perhaps only “institutional Katrinas” are the only way change will come about.

Your thoughts and comments are welcome.