What will you create today

They went even further. The principal of that elementary school created an advisory group of orchard growers from the community to collaborate with the school on the development of its orchard. Some of the those growers were the parents of children in the school. These orchard growers who were formerly just the farmers down the road were now expert learners collaborating with the teachers and students in the school to construct knowledge about what makes an orchard thrive.

They were all developing their knowledge of soil chemistry, mathematics, biology, communications and marketing. They are now part of the networked collaborative learning environment surrounding that school. They are in an active exchange with the school on a regular basis.

More students are learning more about the orchard industry, and a few may stay in the community to take up careers in the industry. With the modern learning technologies available today and with recent research on cognition and learning we now have the tools to change our learning environment dramatically.

But schools will resist this change. I want to tell you from my own background as a cultural anthropologist, schools resist change, because they are designed to resist change. They are cultural organizations, and cultural organizations are not supposed to change. Cultures are designed to preserve existing solutions to problems—considerable social and economic capital goes into developing culturally valued solutions to problems and change is risky. We have all had many encounters with school systems that resist change.

An example of this resistance to change is the response to open space schools. A lot of people feel like open space schools were a fad that has failed. About a year ago, an article in the Washington Post focused on open space schools. Northern Virginia communities experienced a tremendous population growth in during the s expansion of the government and businesses around Washington, DC.

A lot of new schools were built in northern Virginia right at the height of the open school movement. A Washington Post reporter went out and interviewed teachers and principals in those open space schools. In most of those schools, she heard complaints from the principals and from the teachers that the open space model did not work. My students listen in on what the other teachers are saying or doing with their students, and they have a lot of ways to send messages to the other students.

It works really well for us. Our teachers have organized themselves into teams. We have cross-age classes and we have team projects across our subjects. Our teachers and students can move around and reconfigure themselves any time they want to work on a new task together. We have some older students tutoring younger students. This is a great school, and we are very happy with it. What was happening?

In the majority of the schools where the teachers and principals were complaining about the distractions and the disruptions, the teachers were beginning to pull in bookcases and blackboards on wheels to make these little impromptu walls around their space. They were intent upon continuing to be solo teachers, teaching in isolation from the rest of their colleagues and the other students in the school.

The school boards in those communities had decided to pass bond issues to raise funds to build walls in the schools, so that they could get back to the isolated classroom with the teachers teaching as solo practitioners. Did the open space concept fail, or did we fail to prepare teachers who could teach in an open space model? We changed the physical space in those buildings, but because we continued to prepare most teachers as if the only way to teach is using the solo, stand alone, self-contained, isolated classroom model—the open space concept could not work.

That was how those young and mid-career teachers were prepared to teach. They believed they were doing what was expected of them as teachers and that open space thwarted their teaching efforts. They were not prepared to do anything different. If we want to take advantage of these new technologies and the billions we are investing in equipment for our schools, we have to prepare teachers very differently than we have in the past.

We have to change our own model of teaching and instruction in higher education. See Schlechty, We do not know whether the open space design of those schools failed, but we do know that we failed to make the changes in the roles, rules, and relationships that would be necessary for it to succeed. Any organization that adopts a new technology without significant organizational change is doomed to failure. You have to change the organization. You cannot just add the technology.

You have to actively work on changing the roles of the teachers, the roles of the students, the roles of the parents, and the roles of the administrators, and start to work toward building new relationships and new structures, or you will be disappointed with the results. Trying to introduce new technologies into schools without these changes would be similar to efforts in the sailing industry during the s, when steam engines were installed in wooden sailing ships.

Steam engines were disruptive technologies. Disruptive technologies change our thinking about possibilities. They become transformational tools. The sailing industry in the s had reached its zenith. They had perfected the art of sailing. They had some really remarkable crossing times when you consider that they were sailing by wind power only.

They had designed a very efficient system of transportation, and then along came steam engines. Steam engines were a new power source, a completely different power source than had ever been available before. Steam engines were a disruptive technology. Before, if you wanted to cross the ocean, you had to have wind power to do it.

Now, you had the possibility of powering that ship with a steam engine. The first steps in using that technology as a transformational tool led to adaptive hybrids. They put steam engines in wooden sailing ships. They were essentially the same ships, with masts and sails, except with steam engines in them. It will never work.

When there is no wind, we still will be able to sail. This is a wooden sailing ship. Steam engines are big and heavy—taking up a lot of cargo space for the coal to fuel the engine—and they have fires in them—not a good thing in a wooden sailing ship.

But the people who tried steam engines also made a lot of gains. They started to make faster crossings, because they could sail against the wind and sail when there was no wind. Their biggest problem, though, had to do with the sailors.

We are good teachers, and we can continue to serve our students well with the instructional strategies we have always used. The sailing industry never got the true benefits of steam power until they reached the constructive transformation. They altered the entire design of ships. They took down the masts, got rid of the sails, changed the whole configuration of the ship, and made it of steel.

They changed the design, because to work effectively, sailing ships need a very different hull shape than steam driven ships. Once they made this transformation, and once they prepared the sailors to navigate with these new vessels, they achieved tremendous benefits from the new technology.

This situation is analogous to industries today that have just begun to experience benefits after adopting computer and communication technologies years ago. The banking industry began by using the technology to do the same things they always did. A bank was a place where you bring money; the tellers took the money and deposited it. When tellers were given computers to manage the same transactions, the banks saw few real benefits or gains in productivity.

They did not get a benefit until they used computers and communications technologies to transform their business. Banks are not banks anymore. They are financial service institutions. You can make your own deposits and use an ATM machine for withdrawals. You can do your banking from your home on the phone. You can get a lot of services from your bank that have nothing to do with depositing funds into savings account or writing checks.

When banks used modern technologies to change their business model, they achieved tremendous gains in productivity. In our schools, we are only beginning to think about how to change our learning models with these modern technologies.

Most of what we are doing with computers is comparable to putting steam engines in wooden sailing ships. But these transitional phases are important steps toward using these transformational technologies for improved learning. As adaptive hybrids, like the steam engine in the wooden ship, they help us see new possibilities. NASA uses an adaptive hybrid. NASA really wants an airplane that can take off from the ground and fly into space.

They have not been able to develop that technology, so what they have is an airplane bolted on to a rocket engine. That is a hybrid technology, two different technologies pasted together. It works for now, and it will get them through until they can develop the technology they want.

Hybrid technologies are being used in education all the time. A more elaborate example is hosted by the Southern Regional Education Board, which has an electronic campus. They have developed 2, on-line courses among the colleges and universities in 16 different states.

The colleges and universities have all agreed that these courses will be accepted for credit. They have found that 50 percent of students taking those courses are students enrolled on campus. They are living in the dorms. Build, own, and hold an office building as an asset? These are all things I wrote down on my Future Self worksheet over three years ago that came to fruition in the past couple of years.

You can too. One of the coolest things about Your Future Self is that it gets you to think differently and be purposeful about your goals. Your Future Self is your North Star, your navigation, that will bring your dreams into clear focus so that you are not simply floating through life with no paddle, and no direction.

Think big! This is not a time to think small or put limits on yourself. Where will you be in three years? What do you want your life to look like by then? The possibilities are endless. By reading Your Future Self each day, you bring awareness to where you want to go so your subconscious begins to pick up ways to help you achieve your goals and the life you want.

Every morning, when you read Your Future Self, you have an exact idea of where you are going. This is your life! Take control and set the intention of where you want to go. Put your pants on — left leg first. Brush your teeth. Drive to work.

Hold your habits accountable by starting with your Future Self. Your Future Self gives you a road map and a flashlight. And before you know it, those ideas that were only words on a sheet of paper, become reality.

Just reading Your Future Self for a week, two months, etc. You have to do it every day for years so that it becomes ingrained in your subconscious. Opportunities are going to show up. They are going to be uncomfortable.

The more they succeed, the more they want to succeed, and the more they find a way to succeed. Similarly, when someone is failing, the tendency is to get on a downward spiral that can even become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Discouragement and failure are two of the surest stepping stones to success. And guess what they have planned for you? Not much. Harv Eker. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future.

You have to trust in something--your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life. Covered in vegan leather. Packaged in g cardboard box made of recycled materials. Shipped in paper box made of recycled materials. The Daily Planner allows for around six months of daily planning: If used daily : Starting on Jan 1, , the planner will last until Jul 4, — consecutive days If not used daily : The planner will last an overall total of days "I love the undated format of the Daily Planner because I can just use it when I need to, and not worry about wasting paper if I skip days.

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