As many of you who subscribe to my Shift Age Newsletter know, I co-authored a book with Jeff Cobb on transforming education. Shift Ed: A Call to Action for Transforming K-12 Education was published in April by Corwin Press.

Now, three months later, I am happy to report that the response from the education community has been strong and extremely positive. Two conferences that had me as the keynote speaker purchased copies of the book for all attendees, and the feedback from these educators has been so positive that I am humbled. In addition, several school superintendents have purchased copies for the principals in their districts. I am currently scheduled to present to three large education conferences this summer and fall, as word of mouth on the book is spreading across the country. As I am a futurist and not a professional educator, it is truly gratifying to hear such positive reactions from K-12 educators.

Why did a futurist write a book on transforming education? Here are some of the reasons:

-There is so much noise, finger-pointing and argument about K-12 education today that it became clear to me that there’s a lack of vision. Many people have points of view, but they are relative to practices they either criticize or support, all based on the present landscape. The present system doesn’t work, so we have to completely start over with a new vision.

-The current system is from the Agricultural Age for its school year, the Industrial Age for most of …

01/01/11 is the second digital New Year’s Day in a row.  A year ago it was 01/01/10, also zeros and ones, the two digits of the Information Age of computers.  That column, called “The Transformation Decade” seemed to resonate immediately as it was widely sourced in the blogosphere and retweeted globally on Twitter.  I created a presentation, “The Transformation Decade: 2010-2020” that was widely requested and delivered around the world this past year.

The definition of ‘transformation’ is ‘a change in nature, shape, character and form’.  The Transformation Decade therefore will be the ten years when most of humanity and its’ institutions will change nature, shape, character and form. This transformative force will sweep most along with a palpable sense of acceleration and change.  In advising companies for example, I have said that old management theories that applied in the 20^th century are no longer sufficient, that only leading from a place of transformation will keep companies current with the world around them.  To not operate with a dynamic sense of the definition of the word transformation will risk decline and obsolescence.

In the past four years, and in the three years since my book “The Shift Age” was published, I have said two things.  First, that the Great Recession of 2007-2010 is a reorganizational recession as it is the economic transition between two ages, the Information Age and the Shift Age.  Second, that we are already in the Shift Age but that the perception and acceptance of a new …

In the Industrial Age we lived with an economy based upon atoms.  In the Information Age we created an economy based upon bits.  The zeros and ones in the title of this column of course represent the digits upon which the Information Age is based.

On 01/01/10 I wrote a column naming the decade 2010-2020 the Transformation Decade, explaining the term and what will come to pass in this decade.  As regular readers know I believe we have left the Information Age and entered the Shift Age, hence the title of my book “The Shift Age”.  Since January first of this year I have been speaking about the reality that 2010-2020 will be the first full decade of the Shift Age and that the first two years of this decade are “digital” years.  What I mean by that is that the regular six digit writing of dates in the two years 2010 and 2011 has a number of zero and one dates.  This of course is true whether you use the American month first protocol or the European day first protocol.  October tenth is 10/10/10 either way, as is 11/11/11.

The last time there were two such digital years was ten years ago and then a hundred years before that.  Now I am not a numerologist but I do think there is something to this in the sense that we have two digital years in a row as the transit between the Information and Shift Ages.  Of course these two …

We are ten years into the 21^st century.  We are entering the Shift Age.  We all have experienced rapid and almost unbelievable change in our lifetimes.  We sense even more change in the years ahead.  Everywhere we look, we see institutions that we grew up with starting to crumble before our eyes yet their replacements are not yet fully discernable. This is a time of great transformation.

In the U.S. many of our institutions were created in the first part of the 20^th century.  It is now time to take them, one by one and transform them for the 21^st century.  Health care, transportation systems, infrastructure and the environmental caring for our beautiful land all must be looked at through the lens of this new century.  Equal to, if not of greater importance to all of these is education, particularly the K-12 stage of education.

The history of K-12 education in the U.S. is largely mapped with the ages we have experienced.  During the first century of our country we were basically an Agricultural Age country with the vast majority living in small towns and deriving wealth from the land.  The single room school house of Abraham Lincoln  was the educational system of the day.  The town was small so kids of all ages went to the same one room school usually with a single teacher moving from student to student.  The school day and the school year were scheduled to fit the rhythms of agricultural life.  The school day ended in …

What a day!  President Barack Obama is the 44^th President of the United States.  This will be a day that will go down in history as an inflection day.  Today is a day when the United States and the world changes course and move in a new direction.

Yes President Obama is the first African American to become President and that is a truly momentous event given the history of race in American.  There is no question that this is an event that not only moves America to the next stage of racial harmony but also signals that fact to the world.  It can not be overstated that this achievement opens a new chapter for a country whose democracy stands for equality under the law with freedom and justice for all.  The symmetry with Dr. King’s birthday cannot be overstated.

Expectations and optimism lead to new beginnings.  For those who think the world will change, it will.  Change can be profound and incremental.  Many think that the euphoria will wear off and things will return to partisanship and bureaucracy.  To some degree they will be right.  It is important to keep in mind how even small changes can move individuals and countries in totally new directions.

Motivational and self help gurus talk about how if someone just makes a 10% change in effort or direction each year, that in several years they will be in an entirely different place living an entirely different life.  Well it is quite clear that President Obama, his …