New Ways of Doing Business

Still reading The World is Flat! p. 177.

Introducing new technology alone is never enough. The big spurts in productivity come when a new technology is combined with new ways of doing business.

It took several decades for electrification to kick in and have a big economic and productivity impact. Why? Because it was not enough just to install electric motors .... the whole way of doing manufacturing had to be reconfigured.

Hmm. Sound familiar about the use of educational technology? Learning to be transformed, not just integrated?!

Are we taking advantage of all the new communication tools available to education? Videoconferencing, blogs, Moodle, web conferencing, email, etc.? Why is it such a challenge to use them? How did we use communication in the classroom before these technologies? Only within the classroom! Now we can connect almost anywhere in the world! Does our understanding of knowledge and knowledge creation need to change from top-down to collaboratively developed before we can truly see the possibilities for communication technologies in the classroom? What will it take to combine these new technologies with new ways of doing learning!?

p. 236. The way to succeed is not by stopping the railroad line from connecting you, but by upgrading your skills and making the investment in those practices that will enable you and your society to claim your slice of the bigger but more complex pie.

Hmm. How are you upgrading your skills?