The Perfect Storm or Climate Change?: Richard Halkett with Allan November

My RSS feed includes Allan November's blog. He includes a podcast of an interview with Richard Halkett (Cisco) and they talk about if schools can be changed with technology. Cisco is a company in the business of collaboration technologies and works with educators. For the full interview check out the link, I have summarized Halkett's main points for you if you don't have 15 minutes for a podcast!

1. Schools can not be fixed with more technology or using technology in the same ways.



2. Educators need to manage change in the classroom so that it is effective. One cannot experiment too much. Effective strategies must be implemented. (Of course, his company will help you with this!)



3. Some people say that there is a perfect storm coming to education. He disagrees and describes it more as climate change. He prefers climate change because after a storm, everything returns to normal. Climate change brings drastic, irreversible change.



4. The world is experiencing global, technological and demographic changes that necessitate sweeping changes in education.



5. The world is spiky, not flat, as Friedman in "The World Is Flat" claims. Technology has flattened the world so that it is amazingly interconnected but is is not uniformly affected. Cities and "developed countries" have an advantage in business and education. Technology has the potential to flatten out those spikes.



6. There is digital divide that exists between have and have not countries. He claims that this is not as bad as we think. He says that only 2% of people used to have an encyclopedia, whereas now 50% have computer with internet.



7. He says we need to look at success stories like the ischool in NYC. He didn't expand on what they do there. Check out the video below.



8. Finally, he states that it is difficult if not impossible to make changes in a school, yet it is even harder to bring about systemic change to school boards and provincial/state or federal education.

I agree that their is the equivalent of drastic climate change in education. I plan on adapting and thriving. How about you?