Marcus Cake

A colleague forwarded me a link at a video. It presents some key facts and music in a presentation style format. It is very effective in communicating the rapid and accelerating change that is occurring in the global community. It is more effective than the numerous articles that I have written here, and much more concise. The video is available at http://www.scottmcleod.org/didyouknow.wmy.

The video was modified by Scott McLeod. The original author was Karl Fischer and the original work is available at Did you know?. I also recommend the What if? and 2020 Vision by the original author. The sources for the assertions made in the presentation are provided at the authors web site.

The author described his “trilogy” here in the following terms:

“So what I wanted to create was some kind of plausible “vision” of the future that they could ponder and discuss. As I write this, I realize that I’ve created a trilogy of sorts. The “What If” presentation was a look at the past, at the resistance to change in education. The “Did You Know” presentation was mainly a look at our present, at the incredible changes that are happening due to “flat world” factors and technological change (with a dash of prediction thrown in). And now “2020 Vision” is a look “back” at our future from the year 2020. (Ummm, yeah, sure, I planned to create a trilogy. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.) Maybe by having one possible version of the future to consider we can get past the natural resistance to change. If nothing else, I hope it’s another example of David Warlick’s “telling the new story” to get those conversations started.”

The original author offered the following comments on the internet and viral distribution of Did you know?.

Now, I’m not sure it’s really “viral” at this point, maybe more like the sniffles, but it’s still interesting to observe. Because I posted it in an easily downloadable form, without any kind of tracking statistics, and because it’s been remixed and reposted so many places, I really have no idea how many times it’s been viewed. But I know it was shown at a whole lot of faculty meetings (K-16), and quite a few conferences, and some Chamber of Commerce’s. And apparently now there are emails going around to who knows how many people. So I’m going to estimate that the number of people who’ve seen it has easily passed the 100,000 mark. Please note that I have nothing to back that up with, just a semi-educated guess - feel free to laugh. (Note to my staff: yes, this will make my already healthy ego even larger. Hard to believe, I know.)

To tie this back to one of the major themes of this blog, it’s a different world out there. A world where anyone’s ideas can quickly spread if they happen to strike a chord. Where you don’t necessarily have to have a large company or a huge public relations effort to make an impact (although that still doesn’t hurt). And we need to be preparing our students to participate in such a world, to understand both the positive and the negative sides of that. To help them learn how to live and work in a rapidly changing world, where a fairly simple PowerPoint presentation that I almost didn’t even show to my staff has now been seen worldwide.

This is just one of the reasons that I believe our schools need to change. They need to change to reflect this new world, this flatter world, this information-abundant, globally connected, rapidly changing, technology super-charged world that they are going to spend the rest of their lives in. Maybe, just maybe, we need to figure out how to make learning viral.

The original author has made this available under the most permissive Creative Commons license. The powerpoint slides and music are available to change. I plan to take key messages from my web site and place them in my own short video. Thanks Karl! I will send you a copy when I have finished.