Tuesday, December 23, 2008

The future...

I spent some time today looking into the future. While many feel that our education system is stagnated, I find it compelling to look at future trends and to think about how they will impact our schools, learning and teaching.

I visited the Cool Cat Teacher blog where she suggested in her Daily Spotlight on Education that readers take a look at an interview, Six Important Forces That Will Shape 2009 at Trends in Living Networks. I found Ross Dawson's points very interesting especially the trend he calls Constant Partial Attention (CPA). He states that "our attention is constantly divided between a massive array of channels." and that "to be successful, we need to thrive on constant interruption.


This makes me think about the times I often watch TV, talk to my husband or to a friend on the phone, and read blogs or twitter - all at the same time! It also makes me wonder how that will impact learning and teaching.

In education, we need to raise the urgency to understand and respond to future trends. While this information is connected to the business world it has huge impacts on education.

While I was at Trends for Living Networks, I also linked to Future Exploration Network where I discovered a few other fascinating things under FEATURED CONTENT.

Extinction Timeline - a fascinating look at what will disapper in our lives

Future of Medial Report 2008 featuring the seven driving forces shaping media

and Enterprise Social Network Strategy Report that features what people are saying about social network strategy

Ross Dawson also posted on December 23 a Trend Map for 2009 created by futurist, Richard Watson and points out a few of the elements of the trend map.

While this seems like an unusual post for me, my brain has exploded with information as I have blogged and twitted in the last month. Hoping that you will join in the conversation.