A Whole New Mind

I just starting reading Daniel Pink's A Whole New Mind. It
covers same of the same material that Friedman covers in the World is Flat. According to Pink there are three factors (abundance, Asia, and automation) are changing the way life is and will be in the future for citizens of the United States. He believes that in order to be successful in the future (not too distant) people will need to be right brained...that is creative, open minded, designer types. If this is the case (and when we will know?) then we as teachers need to remember to balance the mastery learning of NCLB with more open-ended assignments that get students using the right side of their brain. The Partnership for the 21st Century is basically asking our nation's schools to start trying to do the same thing. Their aim is to have students gain more collaborative, problem solving skills. There are only a handful of state department of education offices that have embraced 21st Century Skills. I would encourage you to look at them and see how they might fit/enhance the good things we already do.

Scientists are amazing people….thinking outside the box

Some of our best scientific discoveries were happy accidents or happened when someone was thinking outside of the box.

While teachers are worried about hitting achievement goals (remember 100% in 2014) with their students some leaders in the US are worried whether or not we are creating the type of thinkers we need to meet the needs of the the 21st Century workplace.

Type 21st Century Skills into Google and you will find multiple reports about how the US is falling behind other countries and their technological "know how" and science and math competence.

One of the 21st Century Skills is creative thinking and the ability to solve higher level problems. Wired magazine features an article on how scientists are “hacking” the Earth to solve or attempt to solve our growing problem of global warming.

For example, cows and other livestock emit more than 80 million tons of methane into the atmosphere. Methane is 20x more potent than carbon dioxide. It seems that certain stomach bacteria that exists in these animals creates the methane as a product of digestion. Scientists are trying to solve the problem by getting less volatile digestive bacteria into cows. Through research they have found that the bacteria in the stomach of kangaroos produces no methane. So now the process of getting kanga bacteria into the cow has begun. Garlic in the cow’s diet also kills the methane producing bacteria…now scientists just need to figure out how to make the beef taste less garlickly (seriously).

http://www.wired.com/science/planetearth/multimedia/2007/12/YE_10_geoengineering?slide=1&slideView=5