This is the End

As my final blog entry in PME 811, I have a few thoughts about what has struck me the greatest from the course. When thinking about the concept of innovation I have seen lots of literature on what makes good innovation, what may look like innovation and is not, and what bad innovations may look like. My last thoughts are this: Innovation can come from a vast variety of sources. Top down, bottoms up, one never knows what may catch on, not just in education but in the world. As per my one article mentioned in a previous post, the Americans do a wonderful job of coming up with innovative ideas in the world of education but do a horrible job of implementing them. They pay a lot of lip service to the idea of innovation and being an innovative country, but when it comes down to it they fail in a lot of ways in actually following through large scale with innovations. Other countries have proven that American innovations are sound and worth using. Finland, Canada, parts of Asia and South America have all benefited educationally from the American models. So why haven’t the domestic systems seen such successes? This is a curious question. I don’t have an answer for it (if I did I might get rich selling it to the Americans) but what I do see is that currently in the United States, they don’t feel a real need as of yet for these new ideas. They haven’t gotten desperate enough yet. They are comfortable and content to be where they are. Necessity is the breeder of invention. If you don’t feel it necessary the greatest innovations in the world will fall on deaf ears. However,…. I see the future for the globe as one that most countries will be forced to take a good hard look at where they are headed educationally, costs sky rocket and results do not. The world is changing so rapidly that our old tried and true may not work for much longer. In some cases it doesn’t work any longer. Countries like the United States will have to be honest at some point and make big changes. But I see a positive in that. They have the creators, the innovators, they just need the right audience to value what is already being produced in order for it to take off. Other countries know this and appreciate it. America just needs to do the same. For global prosperity we need collective intelligence that spans national boundaries. No country left behind. And with that, I have enjoyed my time blogging for this course. It is a new medium for me to use but this may not be the last you hear from me.