eLearning on an Economic Wave

Since the 1940’s economist such as Joseph Schumpeter, Ray Kurzwell and now Norman Poire have recognized a series of 100 year waves of innovation. Groups of these waves transformed an agrarian economy of the 1700’s with the industrial revolution. The industrial waves of textile, railroad, petrochemicals and aviation were driven by mechanical invention such as spinning, iron making, electrification and engines. Starting in the mid-1990’s the information group of waves is once more transforming how we play, work and learn. The original computer wave has spawned the currently surging distributed intelligence wave. Nanotech is expected to take off in 20 years.

eSATS has posited that legacy K-12 education industry started its long wave in the late 1880’s industrial age with compulsory education and has long since reached the end of its innovation cycle.

Industry leaders in one wave rarely make the leap to the next wave. The top ten Wall street performers in 1925 were railroads, metals and autos. In 2005 they were information technology, financial services and healthcare/pharmaceuticals. K-12 education has about 17,000 community based school districts and the industry leader does not apply. But the “wave” is merciless. Transformation with eLearning is the only option for K-12 education as the distributed intelligence wave surges toward its crest.

Distributed intelligence started with precursors to the Internet, continued with client-servers and is rapidly accelerating with the World Wide Web. Part of the distributed intelligence wave is what Mills Davis consultants in their Project10X call the semantic wave. www.project10x.com. Although when I see the word semantic it seems to be used in a new context with a varied definition. But it is emerging as a critical factor as K-12 education addresses transformation of school-by-school and state-by-state.

eLearning exists because of the $1.2trillion installed IT base and global market of hardware, software and services from the computer wave. K-12 eLearning has experienced the past 20 years of computer labs and laptops for teachers. The birthing pains continue as student computing moves into the classroom and the focus shifts to digital curriculum and formative assessment. This is where semantic wave collides with the classroom.

Business is transforming from automating transactions and record keeping to enabling knowledgeable interactions with customers and suppliers. Semantic wave is all about net-centric infrastructure, knowledge work automation, supporting cognitive processes and building systems that know what they are doing. The teacher-student dynamic is grounded in knowledgeable interactions. Semantic technologies enable people to create, discover, represent, organize, process, manage, reason with, present, share and use meanings and knowledge to accomplish human purposes.

Seems to me that learning is a prime human purpose. K-12 education is destined to be caught by the semantic wave. It’s up to us to time the launching the surf board and keep it in the groove.