A Brave New World

The last bit of the World is Flat gave a bleak picture of the future for the US. We are now in an age of coming together, but we are pushing away. Many other countries are reaping the benefits of the ever flatting world, but we are becoming more and more insular. After 9-11 many Americans have grown to distrust the rest of world. They are trying to put up boarders when every other country is tearing them down. The world is becoming a singular market and everyone in the United States has to learn to except this new world or be left behind.

I think that we as educators can help citizens learn to adapt to the new flat world. Educators can tap into the world like never before. We can create projects that look at the diversity of the world outside our classroom like never before. The classroom can become a place where people from many different cultures can meet electronically to discuss the world’s issues. Through these projects and discussions our students will be able to see the world outside our boarders. They’ll be able to network with children from India, China, Poland, and many other places all within our classroom located in Medford, Oregon. And, through this process they’ll learn not to be afraid of a flat world, but see all of the potential that it holds.

I agree with Friedman’s opinion of the citizens of the United States. We are a great people. We do have some of the most innovative, cleaver, and imaginative people of the world. All we need to do is wake up to what’s happening and adjust. The question is will Americans become global citizens, or stay just US citizens?

Education in a Flat World

How to teach in a flat world.

The second section of The World is Flat was mainly based on how the changing global environment will effect the citizens of the US and other western countries. The author argues that now that the walls are falling there is no reason why jobs and resources won’t go to other regions where highly educated labor is cheaper. He states that for people to continue to make a livable wage they’re going to have to be able to change with the times and adapt to new opportunities as they present themselves. Gone are the days that someone will perform basically the same task for their entire career. Now people will need to learn the ability to continually better themselves throughout their lives by learning new skill and applying old skills in new applications. In tomorrow’s world jobs will constantly be changing and employees must be able to adapt to those changes or be left behind.

What’s this mean for education? If the role of education is to prepare our children to be productive citizens, how can education better serve students that are heading into this new ever changing world? Thomas L. Friedman says that education needs to allow students connect subjects and that teachers need to be more personal. He said that teachers need to teach students how to love to learn, and the best way to do this is to for teachers to show that they care. I completely agree with Thomas, but I think that he didn’t describe how to complete this process. He talked about elementary school and then went straight to university level. I think that we need to talk more about what’s in the middle.

I think that we do children a big disservice by completely changing the wheel between elementary school and high school. In elementary school student jump between subjects seamlessly, and then apply the information in a culminating project that forces students to use multiple subjects. The students are making large connections and making practical applications. It’s no surprise that students in elementary school on average enjoy school and perform well on tests. They’re engaged and they see practical applications of their work daily.

This all changes when students get middle school. Now students move from classroom to classroom studying different subjects with different teachers (losing a large percentage of actual school time between classroom changes). Now the subjects aren’t connected. There are no longer culminating projects. In fact, often times the only time that teachers collaborate is interdepartmental. Meaning a biology teacher will talk with a chemistry teacher, an algebra teacher will talk with a geometry teacher, but an English teacher won’t collaborate with a history teacher. Everything stays within one subject area. It’s a very boring process if your one of the students that doesn’t enjoy one subject or see any value it. Also, it’s not realistic. Only in school are people asked to just work in one subject, stop, and move to another. In real life we are constantly using many different disciplines all at once. I think that we need to rethink this process not only to keep students interest, but also to better educate our students.

Here’s how I envision a high school of the future. The high school is divided simply into two sections. Students will spend half the day in the first section and the other half in the opposite. The fist section will consist of art, language, history, and geography. Here students will have the opportunity to study about a certain region of the world, read a book that represents a time period from that region, study the history of the period that the book takes place in, and find meaning in the art of the time period. There might be more than one teacher teaching the class, but everything would be connected. And students would be asked to make those connections. The second section will be more science and math oriented, but still merged together. I know that there are many more subjects that need to be taught, but I’m sure that they’ll be able to fall into the same framework. Over all for students to be able to compete in tomorrow’s business world they’re going to have to be able to make connections from prior knowledge and skills with new ones. We need to teach students how to make these connections on their own. Or, how to self teach.

Posting #1.

The main topic of the first part of “The World is Flat” is the reasons that the world has in so many ways become small. The author goes into great detail on 10 different contributing factors to the flattening of the world. All of which have one central theme; the world has changed so now people can communicate with anyone any where at any time. People have never before been able to communicate in the ways that they are able to communicate now. People can now talk with someone on the phone and show them a picture; all while they’re transferring vital information over the net. This may seem trivial, but implications on the world have been immense.
Business has taken all the new communication tools and made the world its producer, not just one single country. For example, they outsource the service industry to India; where people speak English, are highly educated, and work for a fraction of the amount that an American worker works for. Business has outsourced many of the jobs that used be done in the U.S. to other countries because the communication system allows them to do so, and foreigners can do the same job better for less money.
Even with this frightening reality the new communication abilities aren’t completely disheartening. In what the author penned as “flat world”, individuals are open to a whole new reality where they can acquire knowledge in much easier ways than before. New avenues such as Google and Wikipeda allow people to do research on various topics in minutes. In the past if you wanted to know more about a person or a place you’d go to the library, look in a verity of books, and maybe then you’d get the information that you were looking for. Now, with these new tools, people are able to just type a few key words and, bam, they have instant access to whatever their heart desires. In a flash people are able to make new discoveries! What’s even better, these new discoveries can take place anywhere in the world! Anyone that can connect to the internet can find information on whatever topic that they want.
Not only is information available to anyone, anyone can become the creator of information. So now I can learn about Ghana from someone that’s lived in Ghana for their entire life, and is part of the culture. They can send me pictures of their town and their family. They can tell me what the people the Ghanaian people think of various topics that affect both of us. In short, anyone can get a much better picture of what life is like in different parts of the world with computers then they could with only books. Now we’re able to interact with the information, not just read it!
As an educator I could just imagine what a classroom might look like with this relatively new ability to communicate. I can see my classroom sharing ideas with a Vietnamese classroom. A sort of “cyber pal” system will replace the often dysfunction “pen pal” system. Students would no longer have to wait for months for their cyber pal to reply to their questions. The conversations would be seamless. Students from all over the world could really one day become pals! Our children have the opportunity to have a truly global perspective on the world and its people. They have the ability to learn from others around the world like we’ve never been able to learn before. If we embrace this new technology then maybe the concept of world peace isn’t that out of the question.