Hello 21st Century … This is Odessa calling!

A once-in-a-century event is happening in the Permian Basin. From the dust bowl of 1980s to the economic wealth creation Super Bowl in the 21^st Century, the Permian Basin’s transformation has it knocking on the doors of the 21^st Century to fortify the US Economy’s position on the world stage. This is attributed to two fundamental drivers: entrepreneurship and technology.

Entrepreneurship: Throughout the manufacturing era of the 1960s, the Personal Computer decade of 1970s, the expansion of the service industries in the 1980s, the Internet breakthrough in the 1990s, the explosion of social media during the 2000s, and the evolution of cloud-based technology in the current decade, entrepreneurs in this country have dusted themselves off and raised themselves up. They have done this again and again, learning, adapting, and stretching to create the greatest era of wealth creation in modern history.

Technology: The symbol of free enterprise that is the Permian Basin reflects the entrepreneurial zeal of the United States of America, making it a beacon for economic success that is revered around the world. The champions of the Permian Basin have persevered through all the booms and busts over the past five decades and have emerged triumphant as the 21^st Century has begun to unfold. They were able to do this because they were creative, challenged expectations, and created a climate of game-changing possibilities by leveraging technology*.

This leads us to the question of how do we open the 21^st Century’s opportunities to our students in public education?   Read on post #2: “19^th versus 21^st”

* Technology adaptation in the Permian Basin: Mr. Ray Perryman, President/CEO of The Perryman Group: http://www.oaoa.com/news/business/article_d4211fa4-53f4-11e8-9bc3-8f4188220d93.html

Student Engagement Factor

Effective engagement: Aligned to deliver an impact!

The Education Issue: A critical component of the K-12 performance stagnation has many contributing factors including student performance, parental engagement, teacher shortages, over-crowded classrooms, etc. These could be considered the co-morbid conditions impacting K12 performance. An anomaly is that in every class, there is a group of students who appear to be immune to these problems and continue to move forward with their plans to graduate and go on to college and then proceed on to a career of their choice. A common thread that weaves through this group is that they are all “engaged students”.

Student Engagement – A Critical Driver: Many are dedicated to addressing the performance issues, but one critical driver that could minimize the co-morbid conditions of institutional ineffectiveness is “student engagement”. True student engagement strategy strengthens individual student’s analytical, communicative, collaborative, and creative skills to trigger better learning skills. This model has the potential to liberate the students from individual and environmental limitations and allows them to connect to the subjects and opportunities.

Types of Engagement: A real-world engagement pathway that identifies individual student’s intrinsic career interest and connects that priority to the careers and mentors in the surrounding business environment can trigger a student’s interest to learn the subjects and courses in the classroom.

Aligned Institutional Engagement:  Community businesses falter in their eagerness to help the district due to lack of alignment with the student classroom curriculum and teacher expectations. Business institutional engagement designed to respect the academic boundaries of the district establishes a sustainable and effective partnership of the community with the district.

Education & Career dimensions: ACCESS provides a systemic, disciplined pathway to establish meaningful engagement in the students with a goal to strengthen student accomplishments in the classroom.

To emphasize the need for such skills in order to continue to succeed in careers, here is an  article: https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2018/08/28/survey-business-leaders-believe-students-are-learning-skills-not-those-needed

Research identifying critical challenges regarding student success: https://digitalpromise.org/2015/11/16/identifying-the-top-four-challenges-in-k-12-education/#Challenge1

Blog:     https://avatarplatform.wordpress.com

Time as a factor!

Time as a factor of relevance is not the same everywhere!

At one point in history, time was not the same everywhere. Time was measured with the sunrise and sunset in every village dictating the life and activities of that community. With the advent of railways and commercial activities consistent time was needed across the Country leading to the standardization of time measurement across the country and extending around the globe eventually. Businesses, Governments, Legal, and Financial support systems moved from local to state to federal over a period of time as efficiency of centralized standards supported by technology has taken precedence over local and regional controls.

21^st Century technology made the world smaller and within reach of individuals and businesses with the cell phone and the internet. This same technology is creating a radically successful engaged population and a larger disconnected population that is being left behind with an increasing disenchantment with 21^st Century opportunities. The internet that was designed to level the playing field for individuals, businesses, and communities evolved to the point of cloud-based, artificial intelligence driven services and is dividing individuals, businesses, and communities into The Haves who are engaged in the new technology and The Have-Nots who are yet to make that connection, co-existing in two different time zones.

“Don’t wish it was easier, wish you were better. Don’t wish for less problems, wish for more skills. Don’t wish for less challenges, wish for more wisdom.” Jim Rohn.

Wisdom of the health parallel: How do physicians solve a medical problem? They start with a question, listen, examine, and work the problem.  From a physician perspective, co-morbid conditions are multiple disease processes requiring an intelligent understanding of the root cause that varies patient to patient. Even as many physicians chase the symptoms in their treatment modalities, effective physicians focus on identifying the root cause trigger to untangle the complex, interrelationships of health problems in individual patients.

Using skill to attack the problem: The problem of the economic stagnation of The Have-nots population is embedded with comorbid challenges in K-12, Career, Health, and Community connections. Skill development for 21^st Century jobs is a variable dependent on the quality of K-12. Career success provides the earning capacity for families to deal with health issues while participating in the community services.

To be better: The pathway to a healthier and more economically vibrant community requires an educational model that strengthens career and technology capabilities of students to be an effective workforce in business models with the capabilities to succeed in the 21^st Century environment.

Root-cause trigger: The aligned and impactful engagement of individuals and institutions is the trigger to rebuilding the confidence and self-reliance of the community and to move the needle on the Have-nots participation in the new economy.

“Discipline is the bridge between goals and accomplishment.” Jim Rohn.

Pathway to effective local control: ACCESS provides the disciplined, multi-dimensional, non-linear, and systemic engagement pathway for education, career, health, and community domains to deliver on the community’s self-reliant goal to have healthier and more economically vibrant communities.

K-12 is the place to start. Coming up next!              https://avatarplatform.wordpress.com

The Health-Education Parallel

Definition: Nonlinear dynamical systems, describing changes in variables over time, may appear chaotic, unpredictable, or counterintuitive, contrasting with much simpler linear systems.

Looking back on the history that laid the foundation for the greatest era of wealth creation in world history, the 1960’s stands out for establishing foundational public health and education institutions. These programs were designed to serve linear expectations in a single-dimension model. The post-WWII generation was healthy, hungry for education, eager to work, and made transformational discoveries that opened the door to the empowerment of middle-class success stories that lasted throughout the 20^th century. Quality healthcare for all was perceived to be the fundamental right of all citizens, leading to establishment of Medicare to serve the needs of the seniors and Medicaid to serve the low-income population. Public schools and universities ramped up to serve a rapidly evolving manufacturing sector driven by Moore’s law, that evolved into service and technology driven economic drivers that dominated the world stage positioning the USA as an altruistically driven nation. Our health and educations systems were designed to address the most challenging health problems and were committed to providing the highest quality education for all with our public institutions, because we could afford it.

Fast forward two decades into the 21^st Century. We are dealing with health, education, and income domain disparities that are accelerating at a relentless pace, forcing our communities to re-evaluate our approach to these domains and their effectiveness. Even as we mastered heart, lung, and brain surgery, our community focus is on diabetes, obesity, and a hypertension plague that is taking years of life away from the youth and the seniors, creating an unaffordable burden on our society. On a parallel track with health is the public education system that launched some of the brightest minds of the 20^th Century is now burdened by the responsibility to lift a failing population that is unable to participate in the 21^st Century wealth creation.  This requires a multi-dimensional, non-linear effort to bring about that systemic change that lifts the entire community into an aligned environment to deliver a better quality of life for all.

Health, Education, Careers, and Community Services are the four dimensions of the community that are required to be engaged in a non-linear logic that emphasizes value creation with the sum of it all greater than the individual institutional efforts. To improve health outcomes, education, career and earning capabilities play a role. To strengthen education outcomes, health, career and earning management is critical. To deliver career effectiveness, health, education and earning skills are fundamental drivers.

In every community, the four domains need to align on the community-centric priorities with a non-linear, multi-domain engagement strategy to deliver on the promise of quality life for all. It is time to keep the promise! Let’s get to work.

https://avatarplatform.wordpress.com

19th versus 21st Century Expectations

Crisis: The paradox of economic success in the context of the stubborn dropout and graduation rates continues to challenge our educational institutions. The urgency of this issue is compounded by the fact that career-specific education and skill-development have become essential requirements for a career path in the 21^st Century, even as many of our K-12 institutions continue to deliver in the 19^th Century model.

19^th Century Education Model: The unintended consequences of this phenomenal runup of technology-driven economic success are the consequences felt by the foundational enterprises of our country. Namely the schools and colleges shouldered with the responsibility to prepare our students for the 21^st Century. Historically, our colleges and schools have increased access and delivered on the promise to have an increasingly high level of school and college participation. This is the “Manufacturing” based education system designed around the “push strategy” with a one-size fits all concept. Schools and colleges educate all students equally, at a standard pace, with standard expectations and outcomes. The “push strategy” essentially focuses on the passive delivery of educational knowledge from the teacher to the students. This model continues to this day even as we have entered the 21^st Century, creating “the education’s death-valley” as noted by Sir Ken Robinson*.

21^st Century Students: The ubiquity of the internet, cell phones, and cloud technology continues to transform our way of life. This has grown to include all aspects of family and work aspects. This technology is educating itself to adapt to meet our personal and professional needs as “artificial intelligence”, leading to rapid restructuring of jobs and careers. As consumers, the current generation has come to expect customized products and services in all aspects of careers and lifestyles. This “consumer-experienced” generation demand me-centric services as students and career professionals require the critical capability to be continuous and effective learners in a “pull strategy“, at school and/or work environments.

This leads us to the question what are the essential qualities needed for students & institutions to succeed in a “pull strategy”?   Read on post #3: “The Access Way”

* How to escape education’s Death Valley: Sir Ken Robinson https://youtu.be/wX78iKhInsc

The “Great Divide”!

Technology has been the 21 Century ‘great connector’ for people and business across the world. We are all increasingly connected to every device and every place, giving access and a voice to every individual to be heard around the world.

The puzzle lies in the dichotomy of the technology role in connecting and dividing. The world is increasingly divided into areas where technology is connecting and enhancing the life experience of individuals and businesses, and working against traditional career and business opportunities around the world, creating a new generation of haves and have-nots.

From people perspective, literally everyone can connect to anyone globally and a community of global citizenship has placed the world at our fingertips. Technology has not only connected us, but also enabled the use of financial services, social connections, professional networking and purchasing opportunities worldwide.

From a business perspective, geographical boundaries disappeared leading to global opportunities regardless of the size of the market. In a typical pyramid model, with the entry level workforce being the largest base supporting business enterprises, technology has enabled business services eliminate entry level jobs, consolidated mid-level positions and demand increasingly higher level of education to qualify for jobs and maintain career growth in order to stay competitive.

Relentless penetration of niche markets by large businesses enabled by technology is resulting in a shorter life span for small and medium scale businesses. This is requiring small businesses to grow market share or close shop due to the fading profit models in traditional brick and mortar models.

Dichotomy in the economy continues to be more evident with an increasingly small percentage of the population having a disproportionately higher level of incomes, while growth of middle class families has not only stalled but is demonstrating a very evident decrease in earning capabilities. Lack of wage growth can be attributed to factors such as pressure on profit margins in traditional brick & mortar industries and businesses.

End result: Earning power gap has been widening over the past two decades. Normal upward trajectory of earnings for low and middle income families hit a wall of stagnation. This connected world is now resonating this discontent and negativism at the local, regional, national and global level triggering events that continue to spiral perception negatively.

It is time to make technology work for the people. It is time for an intelligent design that promotes a building block model of economic self reliance for individuals and institutions to succeed locally, regionally, nationally and globally.