The Power of Engagement: Leading By Example:Part I

In the 21st century, any business organization or educational organization that wishes to instill mindsets that nurture creative and innovative thinking needs to understand that this is an impossible task unless you first create a real sense of engagement in the mission of the organization by those who are part of that organization. The advance of technology and increased use of the world wide web in many facets of our lives has created a dilemma for both business and educational organizations. They know that in order to solve the complex real world problems that buffet their organizations, they need learners and employees that will make use of their creative and innovative talents but the truth is that both learners and employees are using these talents but mostly in activities outside the mission of the organization.

Credit: Hari Babu (2014)

The questions that need to be asked from the point of view of both business organizations and educational institutions are:

" What is this phenomenon trying to tell us and what do we have to do as organizations to harness this level of employee or learner engagement to the organizational challenges that are impacting us?" 

If, as an organization, you want your employees to be innovative and creative in their thinking then you need to create an environment which will nurture those skillsets. The first step is to create an environment that encourages effective and powerful conversations that give rise to true collaboration.

Leading By Example--- Reflections on the Use of LinkedIn and Effective Conversations

The LinkedIn platform has one of the greatest potentials for engaging people in many professions in important conversations that reinforce creative and innovative thinking. The real question is whether or not LinkedIn is realizing that potential.

Credit: Trinity Adam

 At first glance, one immediately notices the number of the LinkedIn groups which speaks very well to its diversity. However, even with this immense number of groups, we still have to ask the question:

"Are the members of these groups engaged in effective and thoughtful conversations or is the main focus simply 1.5 million tip lines?"

It is interesting to survey postings in many groups because what jumps out at you is the number of times that "likes" are registered but the conversations don't happen. I am sure for many group moderators they feel like pulling their hair out when they see this happening in their own group. So, what is the perception that people have about how LinkedIn is being used?

Credit: www.Talent Manager Blog.com

 

Also revealing are the features that people find most helpful.

Credit: Plus.Google.Com

The most eloquent and detailed discussions that I have noticed have to do with the complaints people have for the way that many postings in LinkedIn are too much like Facebook. Notice that in the above chart that "posting and/or participating in group discussions is at a 41.7% priority. I really have to ask:

"Are these the limits of our creative and innovative thinking? Is this the best that we can hope for in terms of thoughtfully engaging conversations?"

Do not get the idea that I am picking on LinkedIn or really criticizing its potential but I think it represents a microcosm of a far greater pervasive problem that we seem to be displaying in our societies and it can best be expressed in a couple of questions:

"Are we being defined by the routines and minutiae of living our daily lives to the point where we are saying we no longer are willing to give time to become involved in thoughtful, engaging discussions in a platform that has such great potential as LinkedIn?"

"Are we allowing the frustrations, narcissism and a cynical view of the future to block creative and innovative collaborative thinking which could lead to a better quality of life for many people?"

If we want to capitalize on the power of engagement and nurture it in our business and educational organizations, we need to lead by example. LinkedIn is but one platform that we can lead by example if we can put aside our time consuming engagement in superficial things and devote more of our time to powerful conversations that will go further to improving our present state. In doing so, we don't have to put aside our humanity but we do need to show and demonstrate its greatest assets.

Next---Leading By Example II---A Surprising Look at Business and the Power of Engagement

Pursuing the Future in E-Learning--Part II---Putting the Pieces Together

Although the use of technology is important in collaborative thinking, we should remember that it starts with the human being and his or her skillsets. It was pointed out that the necessary skillsets that learners need to nurture and develop have changed because of the paradigm shift brought on by the triumvirate of three driving forces:

1. Pedagogy
2. Technology
3. Change Management

When we now look at "collaborative thinking" in this new context, we are not talking about the group work or "break out sessions" of the past. The characteristics that learners must have in order to work collaboratively in an online environment is largely defined by the nature of the online resources available. The purpose for such activity now takes on the need to solve complex real world problems that will in fact have consequences that will benefit people and their quality of life on a global scale. Consideration must once again be given to the "cause and effect" construct.The groups that will come together in an online environment with the mandate to research and produce solutions to very real and complex societal problems, will be made up of people who believe that the modern world problems of today can only be solved through a cross disciplinary approach. Unlike the protected silos of knowledge and skillsets of the past, the new collaborative thinking recognizes the need to bring together individuals who have the necessary skillsets to solve a complex problem. A simple example might be the following:

Tasked Problem: " Dateline: August 25, 2017:A plane carrying diplomats from three countries has crash landed on a small plateau of ice in the Himalayas at a peak called Nanga Parbat. Transponders on the bodies of the diplomats are sending back physiological data  including heart, respiration, and internal body temperature readings. Readings indicate that all diplomats are alive although there is a discrepancy in body temperatures. The transponder of the plane, although weak, indicates that the plane crashed at 6700 m. above sea level."

Credit: www.himalayamountains.com

Questions:

1. In order to mount a rescue, what disciplines and skillsets will be needed in order to not only get a complete picture of the problem and then come up with an effective solution?
2. Checking with online AI, give us a list of people who have the necessary complementary skillsets that we will need to address the tasked problem.
3. What global databases will we need to have free and open access to in order to establish an effective VPN?
4. What are the potential routes that may be used for the intended rescue? Who can provide us with accurate pro's and con's of each route?
5. What technologies can we harness in order to get a full picture of the problem and come up with solutions? How do we maintain contact with body transponders if power starts to fail?

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Credit: http://www.danmette.com/blog

Collaborative thinking goes beyond simple discussion and instead incorporates each team member's ability to access credible data, assess data from a number of sources and use the individual specific talent whether it is meteorology, mathematics, or medical skills and contribute to the analysis of the problem and ultimately to an innovative but effective solution.
An important skillset that all team members must have is the practiced ability to ask the right questions about the problem tasked. This is where access to an AI machine is invaluable because of its ability to do needed calculations, offer probability factors and also link with important global discipline databases on the web. The problem suggested above is relatively simple compared to the many complex rel world problems that the world currently faces. In these types of problems, the "wild card" is the unpredictable behaviour of human beings.

This type of scenario based learning is the type that should be utilized more and more in E-Learning because it nurtures the type of collaborative thinking needed in order for agents of change to become effective problem solvers of the very real problems that our world faces. The skillset of being able to interface with an AI and its abilities will enable us to go along way to the goal of stopping global problems that are destabilizing our civilizations. The path taken is exciting, purposeful and meaningful.




Next...Pursuing the future in E-Learning---Creativity and Innovation Thinking
[It is worth taking note that conversations only can take place when people are willing to share their views on topics. Surprisingly enough it is under such conditions that deeper learning takes place rather than the shallow temporary learning that takes place in information jolts. Pass this message along.]

Pursuing the Future in E-Learning: Connecting Evolving Practices to a New Vision:Part I

As most world history teachers will tell you, all history is defined by "cause and effect". A simple analogy would be to consider a billiard table with a full set of billiard balls on the table. Striking the cue ball or introducing an event causes the cue ball to impact other billiard balls on the table. These billiard balls would represent current events on a world scale. The action of using that cue ball causes a chain reaction of effects on many events. It is worth noting that very rarely does one cause only result in one effect. We see this type of reality in historical events. For example, the cause of World War I was not just the product of one causative event. It was in fact caused by multiple events but the singular event of the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand and his wife brought multiple causes that were already there to the tipping point.

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Another popular analogy used to describe cause and effect in relation to the spread of Communism in Southeast Asia in the late 1960's and the decades of the 1970's and 1980's was the
"Domino Effect". However, this analogy was a based on movement in a linear, one direction paradigm and usually one cause.

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So, you might ask why the history lesson and what does this have to do with E-Learning practices?


Perhaps, part of the answer is that when the Internet came into the mainstream as a credible means for people to pursue learning at the start of the millennium, the singular dimension of cause and effect in learning became a multi-dimensional entity because on a global scale and in a dimension of immediate communication and response, multiple causes of change in learning now impacted on how the art of education and learning should proceed. Instructional designers who in the past had followed a regimen of stable "best practices", now found that rather than having time graduated change in best practices they were forced to deal with an exponential growth in knowledge across disciplines and a new learning environment that was global and immediate in nature and took them into new pedagogical practices that allowed learners to capitalize on the assets made available by the World Wide Web. They were faced by and still are confronted by the question:

" Is a design model such as ADDIE still a viable best practice model or is this still single dimension thinking? Do we need to advance a design model that is more adaptive to the flux of change and agile?"

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It would seem that there is movement in the instructional design community to try to address the challenges of the advance of a relatively new learning environment. There are many ISD models that are spin off variations of ADDIE. There are also ISD models from Dick and Carey and also Kemp. One important response to the changes has been the introduction of rapid prototyping which is a reaction to the immediacy of the web environment which has stepped up global competition to deliver new services and products to a whole new level. However, we are still faced with the sobering question:

"Is this enough or are we still mired in single dimensional thinking?"

Pursuing the Future: New Levels of Thinking

Collaborative Thinking: Making the best use of the intellectual assets of business organizations, the scientific community and the academic community in an online world is the goal to strive for in a age that by its own definition is an age of learning and information. Problems faced by societies of the past, due to geographical distance and time seemed to be isolated and largely insular in the relationships among nations. Outside collaboration was only sought when a crisis arose that would affect more than one nation. Examples of this would be the world wars. Resources were contributed and pooled to address the common threat to the nations involved.

  

However, the advance of technology and mediums of communication have changed the nature of the new problems that we face as societies. Problems are no longer just regional concerns but have taken on global dimensions. For example, in the past, a terror attack on a country half way around the world from you would be brought to your attention through the media but didn't directly affect you unless the leader of your country sought to include your country in the event. In terms of the billiard ball analogy, the causative events lost most of their impact before reaching your billiard ball. Now as a result of the Internet and its reach around the world, terror can be exported and recruitment in far away places can bring terror into your country. You can name many other complex real world problems that will exhibit the same reach and influence on a global level as a result of the ever increasing access of the human race to global internet resources.

This essentially means that in order to address these new complex real world problems effectively, requires a collaborative form of thinking that is global in nature. Simply put, in order to effectively address complex real world problems that are integrated into the world wide web, we need to utilize collaborative thinking on a global scale. This means the creation of global collaborative groups whose members may be from a plethora of countries around the world.

The Billiard Ball of New Technology: Collaboration of AI With Humans

The advance of new technologies such as Artificial Intelligence is a rapidly moving billiard ball that will have a substantial impact on our new way of doing collaboration in order to solve complex real world problems.

We can choose from two main approaches:

1. We can deem that in order to free up time for humans to be creative and innovative, we can relegate the intelligent machine to the often repetitive, time consuming tasks that take us away from using our creativity and innovative thinking. In an industrial setting, this is being done in ways in which the robotic device is involved in assembly line tasks. The motive of business organization leaders is not necessarily to free up the creative and innovative talents of their human workers but may come down to producing effective capital streams.
2. We can make greater use of the capacity of artificially intelligent machines to use their talents to collaborate and adapt to the needs of the tasks the human group have before them. In other words, work hand in hand with them and using their talents to complement our own.

   

Credit: Global Specs

In an editorial in Science Magazine (Jan. 2016), the authors argue for human-machine collaboration in “human computation systems.” Such a system would use human creativity to propose new ideas while algorithms test, evaluate, and facilitate revision of those ideas. The authors tout it as a kind of shortcut to solving the “hard problems” of A.I. by having humans do the work that computers can't quite do yet.
 They also point out that this approach avoids the “existential risks” of A.I. that the likes of Elon Musk and Stephen Hawking have been warning about.

 The Japan Times (Aug. 19, 2016) reported that the government is funding an all in approach to encouraging AI machine and human collaboration in various phases of life. The two examples they give are:
 

• In the medical field, AI technology is expected to be used in diagnosing the symptoms of patients and advising doctors on optimal treatments by analyzing electronic medical records and huge amounts of data on similar cases.

• In the manufacturing sector, for example, AI technologies could be used to detect signs of impending machinery glitches and failures at factories more efficiently than humans to reduce output disruptions

The drive towards the utilization of AI machines as collaborators with human beings had long been predicted by science fiction writers. In recent Marvel comics based movies and in particular, the Iron Man series, details how both human and AI can work together to solve complex real world problems. Pay special attention to the nature of the interactions between Iron Man Tony Stark and his AI. This is the type of collaborative synergy that needs to take place in order to arrive at solutions to complex real world problems that threaten us as human beings.

 The future of effective decision making involving complex real world problems will include the use of new technologies but they must be used in a life affirming manner rather than a self destructive manner. The sobering question that we face is one suggested by Max Tegmark, a founder of the Future of Life Institute which is this:

" In a race between the growing power of the technology, and the growing wisdom we need to manage it, can our wisdom meet the challenge?"

Next.... Part II--Pursuing the Future--Putting the Pieces Together

Hacking Higher Education: Evolving Technology, Pedagogy and Faculties of Education

Hacking Higher Education: Evolving Technology, Pedagogy, and Faculties of Education

The teachers that operate in classrooms today, whether in universities, high schools or elementary schools are products of the training that they received from the respective faculties or colleges of education. If you notice a common thread or pattern to their methods it is the fact that they were trained in the "one-size fits all" model of education.

 
 Having said that, I know that educators will point out that the drive for what is called "differentiated instruction" in which individual learning differences are addressed within the classroom, is alive and well. I would point out that I too was in the brick and mortar school system at the time of its introduction and my observation was that although in the public arena, it was mandated and proclaimed  and heralded as a panacea for learning differences, in the day to day front lines,it was difficult to implement effectively. If this was indeed the case, we have to ask:

"If  individualized learning or differentiated instruction was such a noble undertaking, why has it not become the "de facto" approach to learning? Why do educators struggle with implementing it effectively within their classes?"

Credit: www.education.cambridge.org

 Hacking Faculties of Education--Getting Started

The following are some ideas on how faculties of education can start the needed transformation to training teachers as agents of change in keeping with the needs of a globally connected collaborative world:

Disruptive Change: Effective institutional change does not happen over night. However, as societies will testify, we can not keep turning out "industrial model education clones" that will continue a vicious cycle that is well past its "best before date". Therefore, it would be worthwhile for the faculty to establish a educator training section designed to reflect the purpose of training educators to become agents of change. In business, when it needs to nurture innovative ideas, some devote on average 10-20% of its resources to pursue innovation while still being able to maintain its mainstream activities. When we look at the evolution of learning in the 21st century, it is a good idea to take stock of where we presently sit.

Credit: Paul Taylor (2015)

        We also need to recognize that we need to change from what we may term the "old transmission model" of learning entrenched as a result of the industrial model mindset to a model that is more reflective of how human beings really learn as evidenced by research from Neuro-Cognitive science.

Credit: Graham Attwell (2008)

 

 



A New Purpose = New Skillsets:

If  we train new educators for the purpose of creating agents of change who will then go into classrooms, either online or in the brick and mortar environment, they will need to model and encourage a new set of skills that more effectively meet the needs of a 21st century globally connected and collaboratively networked world. The following are representative of the needed skillsets:

1. Move from use of technology as an "add on" to use of technology as an extension of man's creativity, innovation and problem solving ability. Something that becomes far more comfortable and intuitive.
2. Move from protected and separated "silos of knowledge" to "cross disciplinary, collaborative groupings"; almost symbiotic in terms of relationships.
3. Move from static pedagogy to a more open, adaptive, fluid pedagogy.
4. Move from single discipline problem solving to cross disciplinary collaborative solving of complex real world problems.
5. Move from emotionally based thinking to a linking of divergent and critical thinking.
6. Move from instructional design based on one method to more network and design thinking.
7. Move from instruction to accumulate content to the active creation of new knowledge and skillsets.

 Although technology is impacting education, it is pedagogy that needs to evolve by harnessing technology to open new paths to make education and E-Learning in particular more irresistibly engaging to teachers and the students of the 21st century. The essentials for this may be represented by a proposed model by Terry Heick.

Credit: Terry Heick

An open, adaptive and agile pedagogy can open opportunities to use the resources of the web to enrich and extend the learning of students and teachers alike.

The Opposition to Disruptive Change:

It would be naive to believe that such changes will not be met with skepticism, resistance and a drive to maintain the status quo because it is comfortable and very predictable. Consider the degree of resistance to the idea of social networking as a simple example where educators would rather have an outright ban on the use of social media in the classroom rather than incorporate it as a means of extending and enriching education. The history of resistance to it has not really improved today considering how much we now know about it.

Credit: Graham Attwell (2008)

Consider the opposition and misinformation that exists in regards to E-Learning in its many forms. The attitudes of high education educators in many institutions to the use of E-Learning in their practice is a symptom of the problem.

Credit: www.er.educause.edu (2015)

Credit: www.er.educause.edu (2014)

 Our faculties and colleges of education are still organized physically in the same way as they were in the prime time of the industrial economy.

 

"Are we still entrenched in a "command and control" system which prepares educators for the world of the past?"

Can we still afford this type of organization or is it time to learn how to harness disruptive change to the benefit of a growing, increasingly disconnected generation of students?

Next... Pursuing the Future

Hacking Higher Education--Part II--Delving into Areas of Vulnerability to Disruptive Forces

Taking the previous conversation further, we come to the second hack needed in higher education, that being the use of emerging technologies by faculty in regards to instruction. The vision and purpose and mandate of education as seen by the university determines how instruction and the use of technology takes shape. Alvin Toffler made it quite clear in his work under such 20th century titles such as "Future Shock (1970)" and "The Third Wave (1980)", the danger of proceeding without a carefully examined vision of whatever enterprise you are involved in. Education is such an enterprise.

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Hack #2: Use of Emerging Technologies By Faculty in Instruction

In this age of technological integration into all levels of life, when it comes to the education that learners receive, it must have the following qualities:

• The learning experiences must be irresistibly engaging! The old concept that a learner comes to an educator with a mind that is a "tabula rasa" waiting to be filled is naive at best and reflective of pedagogical incompetence of the instructor at its worst. Learners do not want to be treated as a passive audience and just a face among many faces, although the physical environment of many universities still adhere to encouraging this type of design. We can learn much from observing a large university class and judge the level of thoughtful engagement with the instruction.

For university instructors, maintaining the "sage on the stage" approach to instruction reinforces the idea in the minds of students that they are still "widgets on an assembly line" being acted upon, tested for quality control and then moved on to the next instructor who repeats the process. What learners really desire is an honest admission by faculty that they are willing to be co-learners with them and mentors on the side.

• Instructors MUST NOT take their written material that they have used for years and in an uncritical fashion put it in an online format just to prove that they are in sync with the times. Using PowerPoint slides does not mean that you are high tech. How you change your pedagogy to take advantage of the many useful resources of the online world and create engagement that not only allows students to use the technology to collaborate with others in the class and the world in a tasked problem AND includes you as a mentor or player, speaks volumes to students. In such a scenario, other things that were previously distractions such as checking Facebook or Twitter, are now used to engage students in their learning.

• Given the great flux in the way that people live in this age, education must be able to be highly personalized and individualized. One attempt that universities have made to address this issue is by the development of MOOCS. However, although some MOOCS are successful, many have a number of inherent problems that stem from university motivation for their creation, lack of reasonable cost for courses and lack of mentoring relationships between instructors and learners. It is my opinion that in order for MOOCS to overcome the problems such as the high percentage of learners not completing MOOCS,  all of the mentioned problems need to be addressed and resolved. Perhaps, as one author suggests, MOOCS need to evolve.

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• The instructor should develop pathways to networks of value that the student can have access to, present ideas to receive real world feedback and then be able to share out conversations with the class that they are a part of. What is an essential in this approach is that the instructor is not the fountain of knowledge and does not deliver content for consumption. What the instructor needs to hone is his or her ability to ask effective questions that allow the students to clarify their thinking and lead them to question and consolidate information and then synthesize what they have discovered through collaboration with other students. Teach students or learners how to think and learn in an online environment. Again, students should have 24/7 access to the online learning environment using whatever technology, including mobile technology, that is available to them. Ultimately, the goal is to create global online learning communities.

• Evolving pedagogy that involves the use of problem solving scenarios, simulations and gamification will enhance a deeper, more resilient learning and repertoire of 21st century skillsets. Technology is slaved to pedagogy and not the other way around.

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Considering all that is at stake, there will still be higher education faculty that will be highly resistant to any change in the status quo. Perhaps they would take time to ponder their stance. In a highly mobile world, if you are not moving forward, you are moving backward. This quote would also reinforce that idea.

Credit: www.leadupnow.com

Next... More on evolving pedagogy enabled and empowered by emerging technologies

Hacking Higher Education and Teacher Training: Part I- Identifying the Nature of the Problem

When it comes to educators, the one thing that we all have in common regardless of whether we teach at an elementary school or the most prestigious, ivy league university, is that we are all the products of our training. We all bring specific strengths and weaknesses to the profession but how those gifts and talents are shaped is determined by the education institution tasked with teacher education.
Most universities have faculties or colleges of education for teacher training but the work ethic and philosophy of the education faculties are microcosms of the greater whole and reflect the vision, goals and mandate of the university.

Credit:www.theatlantic.com

Therefore, before any real and effective change can occur in education faculties, the changes must first be brought into the greater university or college.

"An important caveat for universities in this age of learning and information is that they need to remember that they are open to the disruptive forces brought on by the exponential increase in knowledge across the disciplines and the greater integration of a variety of technologies into the lives of learners on many levels reaching down to the very personal level of people living in a digital age. They have a choice. They can be proactive in this process of meeting the disruptive forces and re-shaping how higher learning is carried out or they can be reactive to every wave of disruption which leads to a lack of synergy for the learner between their everyday lives and their education."

There are three particular areas in higher education that are vulnerable to disruptive forces:

1. The university vision of the model and purposes of higher education.
2. Use of emerging technologies by faculty in instruction
3. Pedagogy in the light of online technology and resources.

Hack #1: The Vision of Education

 For decades, the vision of education was based upon the Industrial Revolution ethic which basically said that the vision of education involved two purposes:

1. To create efficient and obedient workers for the variety of industries which were considered to be the economic engine of society, The idea of questioning rules and authority were considered to be traits that should be discouraged. In order for this purpose of education to be fulfilled, a "command and control" ethic was established in schools so that conformity and a one size fits all mindset was firmly established throughout the various stages of education. The idea that creativity and innovation should be encouraged was considered to be a recipe for chaos and a loss of control. Creativity to a degree was fine as long as it never left beyond the walls of the classroom. Business dictated the shape that education should take.
2. To create life long consumers of the products and services produced by business and industry. One observation of the influence of business in education became readily apparent in physical education programs where electronic scoreboards in gymnasiums became very much like the neon advertising signs put above city streets. The influence was seen also in curriculum when such courses such as:"How to become An Effective Consumer" became mandated parts of a school curriculum.

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 The vision and purposes of higher education need to be in sync with the needs and problems of our societies. Some of the needs are as follows:

1. We need people who will become the needed agents of change for our societies. In order to have such individuals, we need to remove the past emphasis on content accumulation and instead put higher priorities on developing and nurturing the higher order thinking skills found in the revised Bloom's Taxonomy, especially as they pertain to working in an online world. One way to accomplish this task is to " un-bundle the taxonomy" at the university and college level. One caution I would point out is that I see this approach as a transitioning phase between moving from the industry economy mindset to a fully engaged higher order thinking regimen for all students. Consider this a sliding scale. I would also suggest that such a scale and approach may also be adapted for high school and elementary education levels.
2.  We need people who are able to collaborate effectively on a global scale. This means that     people should be able to network with other people in other parts of the world for the purpose of solving complex real world problems faced by their respective societies, making use of a variety of technologies.
3. We need people who will be creators of new knowledge and skillsets. Creativity and purposeful innovative thinking are necessary skillsets.
4. Higher education needs to enable learners to go beyond the four walls of the classroom for tasks that are real and will contribute to needed solutions to real world problems. This needs to be developed throughout the learners higher education and not be left to graduate school alone.

Credit: www.cityvision.edu

     
 This raises some pertinent questions in regards to the present status of higher education:

"Does the present vision and model of education used by universities support the development and nurture of the mentioned needs?"

"Are universities being proactive in dealing with the disruptive forces impacting education or are they in fact being reactive and are they using a "band-aid" approach to lessen the impact?"

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The next segment will delve deeper into the other two problem areas before looking at teacher training in faculties or colleges of education. I will leave you with the questions above and also the following quote from William Pollard.

Hacking Teaching in "Brick and Mortar" Schools and E-Learning

One of the great fears that educators have with respect to change in education is that:

1. They will be out of a job, or
2. There will be more tasks added to already overflowing daily work tasks which will result in them not performing their job up to expected standards from a number of levels of government and as a result, they lose their job. This becomes a real possibility especially during government election periods.

In this age of exponential increase in knowledge and the rapid development of technology, the learning curve for educators appears to have risen steeply and for some, it has driven them into early retirement. When the educator first entered the profession of teaching, the feeling was akin to a child's first week at school. There was fear, excitement, dreams, creativity and the need for reassurance that this adventure was worth taking. Contrasting those feelings with the last day of teaching, for many it is similar to a teenager in high school. Cynicism has replaced wonder, pragmatism has replaced creativity and reassurance has been replaced by fatalism. The question to ask is:

"Why would educator and student arrive at the same state of mind and emotion which in the end profits neither them or their society?"

The answer is simply that there develops a sense of betrayal of the promise that education made to both educator and student. The talents and gifts that both educator and student bring to education are muted by a "command and control" mindset within the education sector by people more concerned by public image than the enrichment of the education lives of educators and students. They apply a Darwinian "survival of the political fittest" as their mantra with anything that might reflect badly upon them. Bureaucracy was originally envisioned as a means of freeing educators and students from the administrative tasks that were tangential to the act of teaching so to allow them  to use their talents and gifts to enrich education. Instead it has become a quicksand pit that both educators and students struggle in daily.

Going back to the definition we are using for hacking which is, " it refers to a procedure or a way of doing something that:

• Demonstrates cleverness or ingenuity
• Solves a meaningful problem
• Is not a common or well known solution to the problem
• May not be the most straightforward or appropriate solution"

 Our first hack of teaching is to take education bureaucracy back to its original intent which means that administrative tasks that are tangential to the act of teaching should be taken off the desk of the educator and either automated through the use of effective computer AI or put back on the desks of the well paid "Educrats". This should not be considered a political move even though some of its potential ramifications will be rabidly political.

The second hack of teaching is to take the teacher off the stage and off of the task of teaching content for content's sake. If your goal is to teach content to students for them to remember, then unfortunately, you are on a "fool's errand". In this age of knowledge explosion on the web, more information is accessible to the student without your intervention than you could teach them in several lifetimes and the digital natives know this to be true! Educators are still vital to the education of students but as mentors to teach them how to use and think on the web. The use of "flipped classrooms" and "blended learning" was only the beginning. Using the new advances in technology that are required by a new and agile online pedagogy means that the innovative and creative talents of educators can be used to enrich education and in turn enrich the learning of their students.

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 What this essentially means is that by removing time consuming layers of administrative tasks that have been downloaded to educators, educators will now be able to capitalize on their gifts and talents by:

1. Spending more time on the design of irresistibly engaging learning experiences for their students
2. More time for educators to learn the potential of different technologies that would be useful in putting the creativity and innovation back in their profession
3. Engaging students more directly by teaching them how to learn in an online environment and helping them to learn collaborative skills that allow them to network with others over the Internet tasked with solving complex real world problems in ad hoc real time relationships.
4. Educators would have time to build real world networks with global organizations that are willing to volunteer time to engage students in projects as well as mentor them in necessary skillsets. The evolution of online learning communities is not a "frill" but in this age is an essential.

Obviously, for online educational institutions such as private online high schools and colleges, the avenues to accomplish the tasks above are greater and perhaps easier to implement given the developments that HTML5 has brought to enable online education anywhere and on any digital device with the automatic scaling features. Mobile learning can really take off in the online education world. However, it is worth repeating that this all rests not on advances in technology but the evolution of pedagogy to take advantage of the potential that the online world holds for education.

However, we still face one dilemma in regards to hacking teaching, that being the teachers entering education even now. They are being turned out into educational institutions still trained in the model and practices of a past world which is not the world that students, as agents of change, will enter into.

 Next....Hacking Higher Education and Teacher Training Institutions