Post an analysis of the changes taking place in the business world and in your own classroom. Is there a disconnect between the environment in which you teach and students learn, and the workplace in which students will find themselves when they leave school?

There have been many changes brought on by Technology, the biggest one is technology's self perpetuating exponential increase in change. Friendman (2005), said that the world is going to become more flatter in its globalization. The western world would no longer have sole control over it. The world is becoming equally open to everyone. A great example of this was when I was living in Dubai. Over 90% of the country is filled with foreigner's there to work. When I would climb in the taxi to ask the Pakistani driver to take me somewhere, he had a difficult time understanding my North American accent, but if my friend from Norway was there and gave directions in his heavily accented, partially broken English, the cab driver would take off in full understanding. The internet has helped level the playing field not only between rich and poor, but has also mixed together the accents of the world into one global language. You have a difficult time hearing a thick accent on the computer screen. This opens up countries like China (who have more people who speak English than in England) or India with a Billion people speaking English (and at least 3 other languages fluently).


We will never be able to learn everything like a Renaissance man was expected to, but we can learn the skills of becoming a life long learner. My uncle is a farmer and he said when he was young, if he wanted to make more money all he had to do was work more hours, but he say there is not the same financial reward today as there used to be. Instead he needs to use technology to squeeze out every savings he can to earn similar profit. There are fewer people in the country who want to take over his manual labor job, there is a huge demand for high paying tradesmen, but fewer people are willing to undertake that lifestyle. Today, they want instant gratification brought on through things like flashing computer screens bought on credit card debt.

How do we compete with this reality? What should our children be learning in school? My brother went to a 2 year technology collage in the field of instrumentation (the guy who hooks the computer up to the electric switches in automatic plants)(makes double the salary a teacher does). Many of the tools he is using today did not even exist when he started school. When newer pieces of the plant are updated, how does he know how to install them if he has never seen them before? He can not go back to school to learn how to use the new parts as the instructors would not have seen them either. He needs to communicate with the manufacture to receive instant program updates with instructions. Are our students being prepared to work in an environment like this?

We as teachers are still isolated in our classrooms, our doors closed to the outside world. Our children are out social networking as soon as they leave school, ready for the learning opportunity the flat global world now has to offer but they are being slowed down by the outdated educational practices still in place. We are still trying to teach content, memorization of facts. We need to move away from this to problem solving...and problem solving is best done with more than one person, in a collaborative environment.

What can I do this week to bridge the gap between the reality of the world and an isolated classroom. I am going to try to embrace the technology my students use every day. One example I will try is to have the students bring in their I-pods, show them how to download a science pod cast on the topic we are covering and have them listen to it for homework, and then have each write a comment on the web page. The students need to know that their classroom teacher is not the only resource from which to learn.