Louis Maze is having a Socratic dialogue with the students--in Spanish--about 21st century learning modalities and how to define curriculum for technical and scientific jobs (a process known as DACUM-define a curriculum). Maze is from the Texas State Technical College and is here to deliver day one (DACUM). I am to deliver day two of group collaboration related to DACUM and the step before one defines a curriculum-forecasting jobs, technology and educational needs. Our cohort age range is approximately 26 to 50 years of age and all are professors. The multi-disciplinary mix is approximately 12% biology, 12% chemistry, 16% electronics, 10% aerospace and 50% mechatronics. Click on mechatronics to see a 2 page brief I wrote on mechatronics jobs, technologies and model ed programs with the sponsorship of Texas State Technical College Emerging Technologies. I was also part of a team that wrote 100 page report on mechatronics strategy for K-12, Technical College, Universities, workforce, economic development and industry. If you are a participant or an advocate for K-12 and college competitive robotics, this report answers questions about how to organize, what jobs, educational paths, technological systems and policy supports are needed.

 

Louis switches from Spanish to English. I notice...

He is teaching the DACUM design process but he is embedding 21st century teaching and learning modalities into the program. I think, "simply genius--masterful."

I realize that all I need to do is shift from sage on the stage to guide on the side. I do facilitation work, but keynote public speaking has been keeping me busy. For the past two years, I have performed 50 keynote and "talking head speeches" a year. I really enjoy the opportunity to break the mold on lectures and typical conference formats but I only do this 4-5 times a year--usually with large mixed groups for workforce, education, economic development and industry working on regional collaboration under grants. For example, Wired Department of Labor Grants and National Science Foundation grants for emerging technology programs (such as mechatronics and IT convergence).

 

Bob Allen Jr. from i.d.e.a.s. at Disney has helped me see the light over the past 4 years in terms of how most effectively to get large, diverse groups to come together as a team. According to Bob, it's all about story. If you remember, NASA's report on the Challenger failure cited failure of imagination on the part of engineers. This failure of imagination was rooted in a lack of ability to communicate across functional silos and hierarchies at NASA. This "failure of imagination" and communication was also the reason cited for failure to surface intelligence at the appropriate level predating the September 11 air attack of the World Trade Center. Ultimately, Bob's story telling process solves for 10 of the greatest human, organizational and institutional failures in the 21st century.

 

Namely, our diminishing capacity to:  

Marshall McLuhan called it. This most interactive of media and communications technology is COLD-further removing the mind from imagination, people from personal relationships and placing the body in the position of not here nor there. On the other hand, education in the 21st century should be HOT because it is more human, yet, it too has been consumed by the acceleration of technology, communication, information, and change to the point of irrationality (with the exception of a few pockets of innovation).

 

I have a flash of insight:
 
It's all about MARS.

Mars?

 

 

The mission calls for what Dr. George Kozmetsky exemplified in the world of transdisciplinarity--thinking connected to action, connected to networks of capable people. In Kozmetsky's transdisciplinarity, engaged actors work beyond disciplines, institutional boundaries, and silos to design new worlds, new possibilities and new opportunities for human development and social development. Dr. Kozmetsky's technopolis wheel is the unifying framework for this kind of design, thinking and action.

 

 

Read more: Creating The Technopolis: High-Technology Development In Austin, Texas by RAYMOND W. SMILOR,DAVID V. GIBSON, and GEORGE KOZMETSKY, University of Texas at Austin

 

In the world of K-12, STEM and space education, Dr. David Thornburg's Integrated STEM Concept Map reveals the way ahead. Dr. David D. Thornburg is the Executive Director of Thornburg Center for Space Exploration and he is one of the top three educational technology practicioners and speakers in the world in the past 20 years.

STEM is an acronym which is usually used to describe the need for more human capacity, talent and better test scores in this batch of academic subjects. The acronym is simply science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). Today, we are experiencing a convergence and networking of disciplines. What the biologist E.O. Wilson describes as consilience--"jumping together of knowledge." Dr. Thornburg's map illustrates that the worlds of distinct STEM disciplines and the distinction between theoretical (knowledge, learning, research and experimentation) and applied (knowledge, learning, research and design) are drawn together in the 21st century.

 

For example, a key characteristic of K-12 STEM practice today is that science and mathematics is part of the tradition of Liberal Arts, while engineering and technology are part of the Career and Technical Education (CTE) tradition (Brazell, 2008; Personal Interview, Dr. David Thornburg, Center for Professional Development, Chicago, IL, September, 16, 2008). In K-12 education today, math and science are typically taught in the abstract (theoretical knowledge) while engineering and technology-based curricula are taught with applied learning techniques. We are seeing a merger in educational practice exemplified by CTE and STEM initiatives that integrate rigor (theoretical knowledge) with relevance (applied, career and jobs task-related knowledge and skill). Outside of the CTE community this integration of theoretical applied learning is also the common denominator of movements such as "green dot schools" in Los Angeles, the explosion of small learning communities as practiced by Career Academies (backed by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation), some charter schools, expensive private school programs for troubled youth and high schools that work (HSTW).

 

This social integration and balance of control and "entrepreneurialism" are keys to education and also to our economic well-being in the US. What I mean by entrepreneurialism is the capacity to create cultural, technological, and behavioral shifts in order to evolve in alignment with people, the environment and the world.

 

What does transdisciplinarity, the technopolis wheel, history of science and technology, culture of innovation and the STEM concept map have to do with our mission today? 

 

Whether we are talking about education, research, economic production, work tasks, or commercialization--the dominant trend of globalization is a push to merge, to integrate to network and to link. The organizing framework of globalization is consilience (jumping together) and evolving networks. The organizing framework of technology is convergence. And the organizing framework for those who are pursuing solutions, answers and transformation is transdisciplinarity. These trends are motivated by the accelerating rate of the rate of the production of technological and scientific knowledge and invention in the face of escalating, historically BIG COMPLEX PROBLEMS such as the recent hick-up in the global economy, war, terrorism, environmental degradation, poverty, hunger, human suffering and illiteracy.    

For example, transdisciplinarity is the integration of thinking and action that propelled the US to the moon and to global economic prosperity. The secondary consequence of organizing for the Moon mission was the reinvention and investment in STEM education in our schools (for teachers and students), the redefinition of what was important in human development and scientific pursuits in pure and applied research, creation of technologies which created great US and global wealth, and the marriage of classical education (history, philosophy, mathematics, ethics, art, music, etc.) with scientific and technological systems. Transdisciplinarity, history of science and technology and culture of innovation form a continuum which we are all traversing. We need to reconnect with our history in order to create history. We need to reconnect with our legacy and reinvigorate our culture and sense of purpose and accomplishment in the world in order to design our way ahead.

 

All of our individual communities local, regional, state, national and global have a history of innovation. What we need to do is dig out our history of invention, science, technology, engineering and innovation in order to form a platform--continuous and disruptive--for the way ahead. History of innovation informs us of our individual and collective cultures of innovation. Culture of innovation in turn, tells us what we need to focus on--what we need to emphasize, what stories to tell children and what we need to change or shift in our historical trajectory for social and economic progression. In the end, it is all a function of design. What we design for we will receive feedback and results on... If we keep looking at our shoes while we design our future in the US, the world will spin our heads as it whiz'es by under our noses.

 

Following is an example of how initiatives I have been involved with in San Antonio are answering the competitiveness and innovation call to action now indicative of groups working across education, economic development, workforce and industry throughout the US today. Groups I have worked with in San Antonio on the history of science and technology innovation include: founding chapter of the International Society for Performance Improvement (ISPI), Council for the Cooperation of Engineering and Scientific Societies (SACCESS), TEKSA Bio Science Innovations, San Antonio Technology Accelerator Initiative (SATAI), Alamo Community College Advanced Technology Center, Technology Advocates of San Antonio (TASA), Corridor Nano-Bio-Tech Summit, Digital Convergence Initiative (DCI), the North Chamber of Commerce, the Greater Chamber of Commerce, San Antonio City Council, and City's Department of International Affairs, Alamo Worksource, and Economic Development Office. The questions we organized ourselves for 10 years ago include: 
 

1) How can we use our unique history and culture of innovation to shift the perception of San Antonio (inside and outside loop 1604--the loop highway that surrounds the city) as an agricultural, military, energy, low technology economy?

 

2) How can we use our history and culture of innovation to build the right P-20 human talent pipeline?

 

3) San Antonio has a history of solving big social, technological and scientific problems--how can we use our history in order to cultivate students capable of design, problem solving, team work, and systems thinking indicative of our history?

 

4) How can we use our historic and current innovation to create alignment among education, workforce, economic development and industry relative to our way ahead in education reform?

 

5) What does history have to tell us about which industries, technologies, jobs and instructional programs we should focus on, revise and evolve over time?

 

6) How can we intersect career education with K-12 Liberal Arts courses such as History, English and art education in addition to STEM in order to establish a dialogue and a functional relationship across vocational education and general liberal arts education?  

 

In 2007, San Antonio's health-life-bio cluster grossed $16.3 billion, according to the Greater San Antonio Chamber of Commerce. There are 116,417 jobs in medical services, research, health insurance and related industries accounting for one in seven jobs in San Antonio and a payroll of $4.5 billion. About 12,000 additional jobs at Wilford Hall Medical Center, Brooke Army Medical Center and the faculty and staff at the University of Texas Health Science Center were not included in the study. Those jobs come with a payroll of about $775 million. The overall economic impact has doubled since 1997 and the number of jobs has increased by 25 percent. The average wage in San Antonio's health care and biosciences sector increased 47 percent in the last decade to $40,784, which is $2,500 more than the city's average annual wage (Richard Butler and Stefl, Mary, Trinity University, 2008).

The San Antonio Virtual & Interactive Geometry (SAVIG) activities encourage spatial visualization and the discovery of geometric relationships-skills needed for our future mathematicians, scientists, engineers, and those entering many other fields. Many of the activities utilize direct tactile and visual exposure to objects and concepts that have intrigued the ancient Greeks, Renaissance artists and mathematicians, and modern cosmologists. The SAVIG exhibit allows teachers and students to explore traditional, novel, and even surprising concepts and activities in geometry. It can serve as a resource for teachers and provides a venue for small group visits (fewer than 20 students). Examples of our interactive demonstrations include soap-filming of wire-frame polyhedral models and hands-on dissections of cubes into pyramids. One of our more exotic exhibits includes the display of a large 3D laser-generated cone to illustrate the conic sections. Learn more: San Antonio Virtual & Interactive Geometry (SAVIG)

 

 

Culture Shift - CTE Mission to Mars (v1.4)

21st Century Teaching, Learning, Culture and Systems

 

TechBriefs are three to four page studies of new technology and occupational trends from the Texas State Technical College. Each brief begins with a summary of key performance indicators and recommendation. Topics that indicate a strong opportunity or potential for curriculum demand are selected for detailed study. Resulting Technology Forecasts are published and distributed throughout the State of Texas. Jim Brazell from ventureRAMP, Inc. is an author of three of the four briefs below.