A Time to Innovate

It’s ironic that you do not often realize where you fall on a certain spectrum, until you’re forced to take a hard look at your beliefs and expectations for certain things. This seems all too true in connection to education. As I listen to Joi Ito discuss the need to be a “now-ist,” I found myself intrigued by what it really meant. During his Ted Talk he discuss those who have adopted a now-ist mentality and what that looks like. With that mentality individuals focus less of their energy on planning out every detail of how something is accomplished and instead focus their attention on what they have now that will help move them towards their dreams and goals. He goes on to explain that we waste time, with the traditional institutional rules that we use that no longer benefit us on an innovation platform. Instead, he speaks to the power of pull, to pull what resources you need when you need them, rather than stockpiling them to act out an arbitrary system of step-by-step completion, that usually adds in unnecessary actions that can be cut out altogether. This is what inspires me to be more of a now-ist.

Ito’s Ted talk tied right into the next one I viewed with Monique Markoff on blended learning, because when you think about using and obtaining resources as needed, a proper blended learning atmosphere lends itself to this. As Ito explained, education is something that people do to you, whereas learning is something that you do to yourself, which is something that resonates with me on so many levels, and really embodied his point on a now-ist belief system. In the past I can say that I attempted to have this mindset, but often resorted back to what was familiar or most common, which is over planning, and preparing yet knowing that I could never be truly prepared for EVERYTHING that could emerge within a particular unit. This only created anxious around not having it all together for the students. Now, as I transitioned into different capacities throughout the education system, I can saw that am fully open to adopted more of a now-ist mentality.