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OK so it's the twenty-first century...now what?!

Over the weekend I have been thinking about the call for education transformation and how to clearly identify where we are now and where we are headed. Many educators I speak with these days agree that we are past talking about “twenty first century” skills. We’re eleven years into the twenty-first century…shouldn’t we be talking about what’s next after a twenty-first century threshold?

So I created a visual matrix, crossing two different axes that represent the major movements we are currently experiencing right now: the move from ingesting information to acquiring insight and the move from seeing the larger global context to actually being communal in how we think and learn and work.

Referred to as the Information Age, the first ten years of this new century are characterized first and foremost by an information explosion. At the outset, the challenge seemed to be to simply be able to manage the data with which we are inundated. But as the tools to manage data have become more and more user friendly, the next challenge is to find contexts for the pertinent information we encounter…context provided by the experience and expertise we bring to understanding information. When we have meaningful understanding of information, insight is created…the kind of insight that identifies opportunities for innovation. The X axis on the matrix reflects the shift from mere information management to insight.

The second major movement we are living is from the simple realization that we now live in a global economy to actively contributing to a communal marketplace of ideas. The first decade of the twenty-first century kicked off with a celebration that we now have the capability to interact globally, and we have been doing that through various electronic communications. But with this capability now demonstrated daily, the next challenge is to utilize these tools to truly build communities across traditional geographic and political boundaries. It is slowly taking place as we bridge the challenges of time zones, language differences and cultural differences. The Y axis on the matrix represents a shift from simple global awareness to collaborating communally world-wide.

The resulting quadrants move from left to right, bottom to top:

The first quadrant is the Ideate paradigm: generating ideas based on global information. This is where the twenty-first century started. It is the result of norm-referenced standardized testing and the push to compare ourselves not only with local students, but students elsewhere. The institutional reaction to how students compare to others around the world generates entirely new initiatives to close gaps and document student achievement improvement. This approach is linear and sequential and focused on deficits. It is Zeno’s “racetrack paradox”…if you keep advancing half the distance to the finish line, mathematically you never actually reach it. (Aristotle, Physics 239b11-13). This is the rut in which education sits today, and because it is statistically impossible to ever reach the finish line, public education has become politicized and polarized. No one wins.

The second quadrant is the Automate paradigm. Digital technology has allowed us to complete a number of traditional tasks faster, more accurately and with greater ease than we used to be able to accomplish the same tasks in the industrial age. This has been a huge breakthrough in productivity and efficiency. Unfortunately it has also made technology a primary focus in-and-of itself. Automating our schools does not transform education; it simply builds on the ways we already teach with new tools used to complete traditional goals. Of particular concern is the role vendors are now playing in education decision-making; the lines have blurred and we are not necessarily making educational decisions based solely on the needs of the learner. There is now an insidious commercial influence that has the potential to move public education into the domain of private enterprise.

The third quadrant is the Informate paradigm. Using digital communications and learning tools, we can create new ways to empower every family to support their children as learners. Instead of focusing on the technology, transform education by building capacity for all family members…parents and students…to be active life-long learners. This paradigm transcends automating, looking past immediate task-focused instructional goals and focusing on a global destination for public education: the more school-aged families become acclimated to using information portals, electronic communications and online learning communities, the more we will realize our mission in public education to provide a free, appropriate education for everyone. In this paradigm we elevate the impact of education by engaging all education stakeholders using the tools we have at our disposal.

The fourth quadrant is the Innovate paradigm. Beyond generating ideas, automating tasks and informating electronically, innovating is the ultimate goal: generating original knowledge, new products and novel solutions to problems that are valued across learning communities. To innovate is to push the envelope, take risks, gain insight and eventually break new ground that contributes to the greater good. Risks that do not produce innovation are not considered failures, but opportunities to gain insight for future risk-taking, as well. Find a point on the horizon where you know you and your students must be and then use the insight you possess to figure out how to get there. As a result of reaching that point on the horizon, the worldwide economy is infused with energy and ideas and new possibilities. This is the future today’s children will inherit, and we must prepare them for it.

So, rather than talking about twenty-first century skills, identify where you are now on this matrix and then figure out your next steps to help your students and school and community move forward toward innovating. Do you have to go through each paradigm as they are sequenced on the matrix? No. The matrix is simply a high-level snapshot of where we are and where we are headed. Instead of trying to match the matrix step-for-step, practice true innovating by finding the point on the horizon where you know you need to be…a model innovator…and then work to gain insight on how you will get there. Take risks based on your insight, and learn from your journey.

How do we summarize the journey to innovating? From an education perspective, we need to revolutionize the ways we work, the ways we teach and the ways we learn. Not simply reform the old model, but transform public education into a new, global, innovating enterprise that becomes the engine for a revitalized economy. 

"All we have is this moment....the 21st century's yesterday...."  -Andrew Farriss and Michael Hutchence; Accessed online at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Need_You_Tonight