by Bob Sprankle

In 2005, Thomas Friedman’s book, The World Is Flat, sent a wake up call to the United States, with a message of particular urgency for educators: We must stop preparing our students for careers that will no longer exist for them in the 21st Century.
Our country no longer occupies a role of dominance in the global economy, with little competition, as it has for the past 50 or so years. The playing field has been “flattened” due to such forces as the Internet, and any job that can be automated or outsourced will be.

We are training our students for an unknown future, having little idea of what jobs will exist when they graduate college. What we do know is that they will have to compete globally and at a higher level than the market calls for now. Any job that can be automated or outsourced will be, and what will remain are those jobs/tasks that need specialization that can’t be found elsewhere or can only be done by a “localized touch,” rather than the long arm of overseas, cheaper labor.

Welcome to the Flat World! Fasten your seatbelts: it’s going to be a bumpy ride.

Most of us educators have been eyeing the “writing on the wall” from a blurry distance, knowing we need to do something, but struggling to carve out yet more time in our already overcrowded, multi-tasked, over-tested days. It’s the nature of the beast that we hit the ground running in September and don’t stop until mid-June. Thank goodness for summer to catch our breath, dust off our To Do lists, and have time to catch up on Professional Development to start building next year’s journey. So, this August, why don’t you include some of those “21st Century Skills and Tools” in the construction of the curriculum?
With all the unknowns of what the “Flat World” will look like for our students, there is at least one known: In most jobs our scholars will attain in the future, they will be in a “Flat World,” and therefore will be Global. Our students need to become Global Citizens, and further, Netizens, as much of the work they will be doing will be carried out over the Internet, with people from all over the world. It’s already happening, which accounts for the explosion of this Web 2.0 thing you’ve been hearing about.

If we want to prepare our children for the 21st Century, then we first must prepare ourselves, and so I propose this four week regimen to work off some of the flab from the last century and get you in shape as a “mean, lean, Web 2.0, 21st Century Literacy-savvy machine!” By the time you start school in September, you will be more Global, more connected, and more networked — ready to help guide your students down these early, barely paved roads that lead out of the Information Age and into what Daniel Pink calls the “Conceptual Age.”

Take on as much or as little of the following exercise plan as you like. Remember, little steps pay off big, and we don’t need any pulled muscles out there! I believe so strongly in taking small steps that I call my own blog, which supports technology integration for teachers, Bit by Bit. My hope is that by starting with some of the basic tools, you will build a foundation that will be in place for you throughout the next year, and to which you will keep adding to. So, let’s get started!

Week 1: Beach Time with a Good Book
If you’re like me, you start getting a little edgy this first week in August, because you know that you’re on the downward slope of the “Summer Rollercoaster.” You’re about to be deposited back into your freshly cleaned and waxed classroom, ready or not, and it’s time to start getting prepared, even if just a little, as you open your eyes a bit wider to all the “Back to School” signs that have been staging an onslaught since the middle of July. I look at this stage like running. You’re not going to wait until the week before the big race to go make sure you know where both your running shoes are… you’re going to start stretching those muscles and slowly getting into shape. So, what better way to warm up than to start this week off with a good book at the beach?!

Daniel Pink’s book, A Whole New Mind, serves as a great follow-up to Friedman’s The World Is Flat. Pink agrees with Friedman’s assessment that the world is changing due to outsourcing to Asia, but he argues that Automation and Abundance are having significant impacts as well. Because of all three forces, Pink believes we are evolving from a Left-brained Society to one where the “Right Brainers” will “rule the roost.” In short, we are moving from the Information Age into the Conceptual Age. In order to prepare ourselves and students for the new economy, Pinks suggests we focus on 6 Senses of Right Brain skills: Design, Story, Symphony, Empathy, Play, and Meaning. The book offers hope after reading The World Is Flat, because it helps us to examine and evaluate the skills that we are putting emphasis on in our schools, and begs the question: Are these the skills that will matter when our students enter the workforce?

Head on over to this great article at EducationWorld.com for a review of the book. Then, listen to 3 outstanding interviews with the author, carried out by Alan November at November Learning:

• Part 1
• Part 2: New School Design
• Part 3: Intrinsic Motivation & Persistence

Also, here’s a page that Glenn E. Malone set up to compile all of the links that Pink includes at the end of each chapter.
Another important site to visit is The Partnership for 21st Century Skills to further explore skills that need to be integrated into the classroom in order to prepare our students for their future.

Have a great week, and don’t forget the suntan lotion!

Week 2: Read and Respond
It’s time to sink our teeth in! This week, we’re going to turn you into a bona-fide Blog Reader. You’re already halfway there, because whether you knew it or not, you’re reading a blog right now!
There is so much great information out on the web from other colleagues and education professionals — how do we harness it all? This week, you’re going to learn one way to capture what’s relevant to you in the world of blogs, and you’ll train all that great information to come to you, rather than going searching for it.

First stop: head on over to the K12 Online Conference. This is an online conference that was created to support educators in learning about Web 2.0 tools and integrating technologies. It took place in “real time” last October, but all of the presentations continue to live on the site and are geared for people to “attend” at any time, as many times as they’d like and in any time frame they’d prefer. Currently, people are preparing for the 2007 Conference, but the 2006 conference will remain indefinitely. Oh, and did I mention it’s entirely free?

Begin the week by going to the presentation called “RSS: A Four Part Series.” This is probably one of the greatest and easiest tutorials on understanding RSS and the power of using an Aggregator to subscribe to Blogs. This week, just start with the first part in the presentation (Part 1: Bloglines) and it will have you setting up and using Bloglines in no time. We’ll return to one of the other presentations later on.

Need another lesson on RSS? Head over to this post called “How to Explain RSS the Oprah Way” for an alternative explanation.

After you set up your Bloglines account, go find some blogs! Start off with PBS’s own bloggers: Andy Carvin’s learning.now and Mark Glaser’s Media Shift. All together, find at least 5 Educator Blogs to subscribe to. Have coffee each morning with each of the blogs, and leave at least 2 comments on any of the blogs by Friday. After all, part of the power of blogging is that it is a “2-way conversation.” Leave me a comment here on this Media Infusion blog, or visit my own blog at www.bobsprankle.com/bitbybit.

Now that you’re a pro with RSS, check out PBS’s other RSS feeds in order to keep up to date on TV and Web content from PBS.

Week 3: Create Content, Join a Club, Tune In!
Ok, this week it’s time to be your own blogger. That’s right. No more “lurking” from the sidelines. I encourage you this week to start your own blog at Edublogs.org, the “largest educational blogging site on the web,” brought to you by James Farmer.
First, head back to the K12 Online Conference and watch the presentation by Mark Wagner, entitled “Blog if You Love Learning: An Introduction to Weblogs in Education (Basic)”. Mark will walk you through the entire process of setting up your own blog! Next, decide on your purpose for your blog. It could be a classroom blog (set up in time for the new school year) in order to showcase student work or communicate with parents, or a blog where you reflect on teaching and learning. You decide.

Still too scary? Ok, then go join a community that already exists out there (i.e., someone else’s blog) tailored to your needs and interests. There are literally thousands out there, but might I suggest a few? A relatively new site that’s taking off quickly is Classroom 2.0. This is a site started by Steve Hargadon over at ning.com (which is a social networking site, much like MySpace, but smaller and more focused on specific groups) where educators are coming together to support each other with technology integration and professional development resources.

Another great site to “join” is EdTechTalk, which houses a huge community of discussion forums and online audio shows centered on professional development. The audio shows can either be listened to live or as podcasts that can be downloaded later.

Huh? What’s a podcast? Basically, it’s like a blog, but it’s audio or video instead of text. You can subscribe to podcasts just like blogs — right in Bloglines, or using iTunes. There are hundreds of Podcasts out there brought to you by educators all over the world. You can search for them right in iTunes, or head over to The Education Podcast Network created by David Warlick or the Russell Educational Consultancy and Productions (RECAP), a UK directory of some of the best podcasts for educational use.

One great thing about podcasts is that you can tune into them while you’re doing other things, like driving, or… cleaning and readying your classroom! It’s that time, isn’t it?

Week 4: Lesson Plans and Casting a Large Net
Hang in there! You’re in the final week of our program and it’s time to put some of this learning to use for your students. Now that you’ve taken some big steps towards becoming a “flatter you” and sunk your teeth into some 21st Century tools, you’re ready to start incorporating what you’ve learned into your lessons. Let’s head back to what we learned from Daniel Pink, shall we? We know from Pink and Friedman that we’ve got to prepare our students for a dramatically different world that requires different skills than were needed in the last century. Let’s start by integrating one of Pink’s 6 Senses into our curriculum: Design.

A great place to start is on the PBS Teachers site, where you can easily search for lessons connected to Design & Invention. Some great ones to start with are:

• The New Heroes: “Bringing the Future to People”, a unit that examines why people invent and the role of technology (suitable for Grades 6-12)
• Any of the lessons related to the program, Scientific American Frontiers: “Games Machines Play”, notably the interactive feature Young Inventors (suitable for Grades 3-5)
• George Shrinks: Lesson plans for Creativity, Critical Thinking, & Problem Solving (suitable for Grades K-2)

Need more ideas? Well, head on back to the K12 Online Conference and watch Part III of “RSS: A Four Part Series” on Social Bookmarking and Tagging. In this episode, you’re going to learn all about the incredible site delicious.com and how using “social bookmarks” can save you hours of searching for lessons online. For instance, if you were to look for lessons associated with a Civil War unit you’re teaching, you might go to del.icio.us and search for “tags” by entering “civil war lessons”. This will bring up a page where you will find hundreds of links that have been discovered by other “searchers.” I picked one of these searchers that I found: “kbirkesdrees”. On this user’s page, I found 38 amazing sites to use in teaching the Civil War! kbirkesdrees did all the work for me! I can now subscribe to this user’s page (remember RSS?), and every new link he/she adds will now also come to me. That just saved me countless hours of doing my own searching.

Next Steps
Congratulations! You’ve done it! You are more prepared to compete in this “flattening world” and are better equipped to lead your students into the 21st Century. Now it’s time to take a deep breath and open your classroom door to the “Journey of 07/08″ and your new community of learners.

When you have time to surface for a breather (Winter vacation?), there’s plenty more out there for you! Head on back to the K12 Online Conference in time for the 2007 Conference, or consider enrolling in the PBS TeacherLine/ISTE Certificate of Proficiency Capstone Program to further your understanding of how technology can improve your teaching and learning.

I invite you to continue strengthening your blogging skills by leaving comments and questions for me below in the forms provided. Have a great school year and a wonderful journey!