Thomas Education

The NESA Spring Educators Conference earlier this month included a provocative speech by Ian Jukes about Education in an Age of Disruptive Innovation. Ian Jukes proposes that we are living in an age of disruptive innovation that poses a particular challenge to educators. Most of us have sat in an education-centered box for our whole lives, and thus we suffer from an affliction he humorously terms Terminal PP, i.e. Terminal Paradigm Paralysis . Disruptive innovation occurs when a new product creates new spinoff markets. For example, when first invented, the telephone needed operators, then rotary dials replaced operators, then pushbuttons enabled automation, then portable phones removed the tether, then cell phones made universal accessibility ubiquitous. Now smartphones replace many other devices -- e.g. landlines, alarm clock, and wristwatch. In the case of computers, keyboard and mouse input is now being disrupted, as touchscreens are the new normal. We must try to imagine...