new year rant

Our education thrives (and depends) on the production of knowledge, NOT the consumption of information.

The role of the teacher changes from dispensing information, to facilitating how students produce knowledge. Producing knowledge is not inventing something new. It is creating the conditions in which students can thrive. It is the connected Mind. It is the merging of the visceral and the virtual.

Teachers work in how, but start with why, always. This is the shift that Sinek articulates with the Golden Circle in Starting with Why. It is also, the "Belief to Action" process from Schlechty (via Hullfish and Smith). You act in accordance with your beliefs. Not outside of your beliefs, but as a condition of your beliefs. And this condition of belief and action is ... the air innovators breathe.

If you are a learner, then NOW is the greatest time to be alive. As a learner, as a curious human who is giddy to know more, the world comes in two flavors - 1st the visceral world, the world known by experience and interaction and engagement. Second to this is the virtual world, the world discovered vicariously through books and the internet. There are no subtle differences between the two. In other words, the differences are GRAND. And fundamentally, the 1st, the visceral, is knowledge and the 2nd, the virtual, is information. Together, combined in the correct ratio 3:1 (or was it 1:3 ?), will produce remarkable, maybe even astounding results. This is why Dale Dougherty is correct when he asserts that "a computer cannot be the UI (user interface) of a classroom." Because if a computer is the UI, then only information is achievable.