Woodie Flowers (MIT Engineering Professor and FIRST Robotics Champion) and the recent Pittsburgh STEM Summit had a similar caution…
Economic forecasts, based in the occupations of 16 European Union Countries and in the United States, agree that the middle class is disappearing. Automation has increased the demand for highly skilled managers and creative types, plus the demand for low-paid food prep workers, dividing into very low paying jobs. Even the low-paid food prep workers need a math (inventory management), science (health concerns), and technology (equipment and payment processing) background. This economic shift is not minor, it is seismic.
The graph from the 2014 Economic Summit in Jackson Hole demonstrates shocking data that shows in the brown downward pointing bars the loss of middle class jobs all over Europe in the last 20 years.
Woodie’s recent video casts out a challenge to all educators. He calls us to differentiate between teaching a skill (such as phonics or calculus) and educating (how to communicate using multiple languages or how to reason using calculus). It means a shift in our perception of what it means to prepare an educated workforce and citizenry.
This week I sift through the 42 applications to the 3rd, 4th and 5th grade research fellows program at Baden Academy, together proposing over 110 viable year-long project based learning opportunities. The amount of work that students, parents and teachers spent preparing these applications demonstrates and the amount of hard work they propose to pursue their projects demonstrate how far Woodie Flower’s message has already reached. How will the staff and I ever winnow the list to only 18 viable projects for 2014-15 school year in a way that empowers the passions of those turned away to build something spectacular without the support of the Media Lab?
You may have noticed a new tag line for the Grow a Generation banner. As I pass the three year mark for this incredible odyssey of small business ownership, I have come to understand that our mission is to provide a scaffold upon which parents and educators can make meaningful projects possible for learners to become better at sensemaking, social intelligence, novel / adaptive thinking, cross-cultural competencies, computational thinking, new-media literacy, transdiciplinarity, design mindset, cognitive load management, and virtual collaboration. Some of the pieces already in place include courses for you to do at home or in the classroom to help your children create meaningful projects with Scratch Animation, the website design tools of Weebly, or the publication tools of Lulu. I can adapt these for your particular projects and make them friendly to Common Core if you wish. We are also holding some adventurous Engineering Saturdays to fan into flame the fires of curiosity in some 3rd to 8th graders. Resources and lesson plans for the Engineering Saturdays are available to GrowaGen Labs.
What tools do you need to help grow a generation of innovative imagineers of a more beautiful and just world?
Woodie’s Video
Aug 11 paper presented at the 2014 Economic Summit on job polarization, skill demand, and technological change http://www.kansascityfed.org/publicat/sympos/2014/093014.pdf
My BC STEM write up on the Pittsburgh STEM Summit held August 28, 2014.
