If we could represent the demographics of the world into a village of 100 people, what would it look like? If we gave that global village access to 161 billion gigabytes of data, what would they do with it? If six billion gigabytes of data were shared in email in 2006, what would it contain? Most important of all, how is this incredible rate of exponential change be reflected in the education of children today? Where is the education really coming from, in schools, at home or on-line? A Global Village of 100 People If we could reduce the world’s population to a village of precisely 100 people, with all existing human ratios remaining the same, the demographics would look something like this: 60 Asian 14 African 12 European 8 Latin American 5 US American and Canadian Out of those 100 people: 51 would be male 49 would be female The Standards of Living: 5 people (US citizens) would control 32% or the total wealth 80 would live in substandard housing 24 would not have any electricity 50 would be malnourished and 1 starving 33 would be without access to a safe water supply 67 are unable to read 7 people would have access to the Internet 1 would have a college education Information Data Explosion in the Global Village 161 billion gigabytes of digital information was created, captured and replicated worldwide in 2006 More than one billion MP3 files were shared over the Internet in 2006 Almost 100 billion digital images were captured and shared using cell phone cameras More than 500 billion digital images will be captured by 2010 Six billion gigabytes of data were emailed from one person to another in 2006 (excluding spam) The number of emails grew three times faster than the number of people emailing from 1998 to 2006 Source: IDC & EMC Corp / The Expanding Digital Universe: A Forecast of Worldwide Information Growth Through 2010 What does this mean to Education? A better question should be, "How should this be impacting are attention to education for children today?" Did you know that 34 babies will be born in the next 8 seconds, 5 in India, 4 in China and 1 in the US. What will the world be like for them? In 2006 there were over 1.3 million college graduates in the US, 3.1 million college graduates in India and 3.3 million college graduates in China. How many of the college graduates in India speak English? 100% In the next ten years it is predicted that China will be the number one English speaking country in the world. The rate of change and development is increasing at an exponential pace. In ten years there will be courses and technology and topics that have not been invented yet. Social and cultural barriers are colliding, collapsing, merging and conflicting as rapidly as the access to real time communications, and far faster than political procedural doctrine can respond. How will the next generation use computers that are faster than the human brain, or capable of storing more data than the collective minds of the world population? How will the next generation be prepared for access to such knowledge in a changing world? Do these facts interest you? Would you like to see even more amazing facts? Visit http://www.executiveblueprints.com/education.htm to watch the amazing video presentation developed by Karl Fisch, with assistance from Scott McLeod, designed by XPLANE. Then participate in the global conversation about education at www.shifthappens.wikispaces.com, or initiate conversations about the importance education in your own community. ______________________________________________________ Words of Wisdom "Let us think of education as the means of developing our greatest abilities, because in each of us there is a private hope and dream which, fulfilled, can be translated into benefit for everyone and greater strength for our nation." - John F. Kennedy "The great aim of education is not knowledge but action." - Herbert Spencer "Next in importance to freedom and justice is popular education, without which neither freedom nor justice can be permanently maintained." - James A Garfield "The direction in which education starts a man will determine his future life." - PLATO ______________________________________________________ John Mehrmann is a freelance author and President of Executive Blueprints Inc., an organization devoted to improving business practices and developing human capital.
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