Modern professional work consists of a wide range of activities, rather than a single specialization.

AI acts as a leveler, raising everyone to a minimum level of performance.

Just because early results for AI suggest that only lower performing people benefit does not mean that this is the only possible pattern. It may be that the reason only lower performers gain from AI currently is because the current AI systems are not good enough to help top performers. Or, alternately, it might be that top performers need more training and work to get benefits from AI. If either of these conditions prove true, and they certainly seem plausible, then AI might act more as an escalator, increasing the skills for everyone, from top to bottom performers. After an adjustment period, the relative skill positions stay similar, but everyone gets more done, faster.

<span>Alternately, it might be that some people are just really good at working with AI. They can </span><a href="https://www.oneusefulthing.org/p/centaurs-and-cyborgs-on-the-jagged" rel="">adopt Cyborg practices </a><span>better than others and have a natural (or learned) gift for working with LLM systems.</span>

Today's kids don't just write for grades anymore. They write to shake the world. Moreover, they are writing more than any previous generation, ever, in history. They navigate in a bewildering new arena where writers and their audiences have merged.

For these students, "Good writing changes something. It doesn't just sit on the page. It gets up, walks off the page and changes something," whether it's a website or a poster for a walkathon.

In standardized environments, students with a high tolerance for monotony and the ability to repress their curious gene are deemed the fittest of the bunch.

It seems that despite (or maybe because of) our fetish with productivity, many of humanity's most pressing issues seem to be getting worse. The unnatural selection playing out in schools creates what every educational institution's mission statement pledges against: the creation of uncritical, passive, challenge-averse individuals, unwilling and unable to tackle the challenges of the 21st-century.

With access to the Internet, and with an understanding of how to create and navigate these online, social learning spaces, opportunities for learning widely and deeply reside in the connections that we make with other people who can teach or mentor us and/or collaboarate with us in the learning process. That, I think, is where we find 21st Century skills that are different and important. Sure, those connections require a well developed reading and writing literacy, and critical thinking and creativity and many of the others are skills inherent to the process. But this new potential to learn easily and deeply in environments that are not bounded by physical space or scheduled time constraints requires us as educators to take a hard look at how we are helping our students realize the potentials of those opportunities.

To me, that’s what 21st Century Skills are all about, teaching our kids to navigate the world as they are experiencing it, not the world we experienced.

<p>I believe that the roles &nbsp;of the Instructional Designer and Teacher are changing and must change in the face of the ever-increasing onslaught of information every human being faces today.&nbsp; Those roles must merge into the Sharer, who shows new technologies and connections to information to others while always keeping in mind his/her own role as perpetual student.&nbsp;</p> <p>To do this, the Sharer must, at least in some respects, plant the environment for others, set up what may grow into connections and give opportunity for emergence in ways even the Sharer may not envision yet, but in a reasonably “safe” environment for exploration.</p>

The Teacher/Sharer, parents and student collaborate on ensuring that whatever method the student is using is assisting in wayfinding toward those goals.&nbsp; If more connections are made, so much the better.&nbsp; But along the path, like signposts, each of the connections (parents, Teacher/Sharers) and&nbsp;each tool (video, Second Life, writing, drawing, blog, podcast,&nbsp; etc.) used&nbsp;to connect&nbsp;to people&nbsp;will prompt the student for responses (dates, opinions, responses to readings) of the set curriculum, but framed in the context best suited for that student.&nbsp;A&nbsp;record of the waypoints shows how the student connected and which connections seemed to spark the most activity and best learning.&nbsp; If the student misses a certain number of waypoints, the direction of the connections is adjusted until success is achieved.

This is exactly what has happened to instructional design, and could by <a href="http://effectivedesign.org/2008/02/11/instructional-design-in-academia-where-theory-and-practice-rarely-meet/">why theory and practice don’t meet</a>. <strong>So much theory has been introduced that we can no longer see how instruction is actually designed.</strong> That’s why I think many times it has become easier for novice (in this case non-academically trained) designers can do it so often. They are not encumbered by the fog of theory.

<img src="http://blogs.salon.com/0002007/images/socialfluency.jpg" title="" alt="social fluency" />

Change has to start with an identified need, not with a good idea. Generally, we only change when we must. Listen for needs.

Change, like great research, begins with asking important questions, and provoking respondents to self-change instead of trying to persuade or impose it.

Experiment. The best, profound changes come from masses of iterative learning and exploration of possibilities.

When you think of yourself as a learner, you begin to act as one, and suddenly all the potential of networks and online information begins to make sense

Once students get the hang of groups online, just like any mother bird, the teacher needs to slowly start pushing them out of the nest.&nbsp; And I do not mean anywhere near Middle School.&nbsp; Most of the students in a school will be ready for this kind of experience nearing High School, and I believe this age will slowly lower as time passes and this form of education becomes more common.

The process of moving the students forward from a group setting to a network will be required, so will an educator familiar with both.&nbsp; For this process to properly occur, curriculum will need to be specifically designed and implemented, taking into account, emerging technologies and student safety within an online environment.

4.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; We don’t respect titles; we respect people.<br> The internet has served as a great social equalizer. In most online communities your value (and therefore reputation and power) are based on what you contribute not who you are. A well-read 18 year old who knows his stuff and is constantly active in the editing process of a Wikipedia article may be revered more than the heavily credentialed professor who interjects, corrects, and condescends to the community of the page. These relationships break down entitlements and, instead, center on accomplishment and contribution.<br> So if you want to respected, simply play your part and contribute. You’ll be known for the actions you take that probably earned you that title in the first place.

As we've <a href="http://www.mindhacks.com/blog/2008/06/web_making_us_worrie.html">noted</a> <a href="http://www.mindhacks.com/blog/2007/09/too_much_too_young.html">several</a> <a href="http://www.mindhacks.com/blog/2008/07/facebook_ate_my_psyc.html">times</a>, leading scientists or commentators can make international headlines by simply suggesting that new technology is harming the mind, brain and relationships of the modern citizen, despite a general lack of evidence or flat out evidence to the contrary.

This is why - I think unconsciously - so many academics and educators resist contemporary ICT so fiercely. Accepting these new technologies means that the advantages they were taught to prize in themselves - their study habits, their ability to focus, their willingness to depend on authoritative sources and to observe classroom rules - might prove to be their undoing. And the disadvantages they despised in others, ADHD for example, processing information via pictures instead of the abstraction of text as another, the disadvantages that have been labelled as pathological "disabilities," might prove to be advantageous in this new world.

That ADHD kid might be far better in front of multiple monitors with a dozen windows open and 15 tabs going in Firefox than the professor and former high school valedictorian who is really uncomfortable if a TV is on while she is reading. That Asperger's kid who processes images efficiently might be far better at analysing changing maps than the text-dependent historian.

I feel the same watching most classrooms, seeing most reading assignments, observing how assessments are conducted in educational institutions. Yes, that carriage is wonderful, but the cars will rush past it. Yes, that calligraphy is beautiful but you just spent six months creating a single book. Certainly, that bronze sword is beautiful but the steel weapon will cut it in half. Yes, you did wonderfully on the multiple-choice exam but I need people who can find information and develop new ideas, not repeat what I already know. Yes, you read that whole book, but I need to know the range of observations from these twelve sources around the globe.

I suspect that we will see, in retrospect, that there are biological and neurological changes occurring due to technological changes, but it’s not really important. The remonstrations about the evidence remind me of scientists concluding that bumblebees can’t fly and philosophers concluding that there is no physical reality. Like Berkeley, I refute you thus, with the students I teach every term… but I will refrain from kicking them as proof!

The analogy I came up with a few days ago was that of eating. People eat very differently in times of abundance than scarcity. Their biology doesn’t significantly change (though it does some), but it would be foolish to look around and argue that people aren’t really eating differently, it’s just a change in their food context. It would be wiser to recognize that the socioeconomic context is an important factor to consider when it comes to nutrition and try to teach proper eating habits in an environment that is not just no longer one of hunting and gathering, but one that is very different for most of us from even 50 years ago.