We live in a time of information abundance, which far too many of us see as information overload. With the sum total of human knowledge, past and present, at our fingertips, we’re faced with a crisis of attention: which ideas should we engage with, and why? Big Think is an evolving roadmap to the best thinking on the planet — the ideas that can help you think flexibly and act decisively in a multivariate world.
A word about Big Ideas and Themes — The architecture of Big Think
Big ideas are lenses for envisioning the future. Every article and video on bigthink.com and on our learning platforms is based on an emerging “big idea” that is significant, widely relevant, and actionable. We’re sifting the noise for the questions and insights that have the power to change all of our lives, for decades to come. For example, reverse-engineering is a big idea in that the concept is increasingly useful across multiple disciplines, from education to nanotechnology.
Themes are the seven broad umbrellas under which we organize the hundreds of big ideas that populate Big Think. They include New World Order, Earth and Beyond, 21st Century Living, Going Mental, Extreme Biology, Power and Influence, and Inventing the Future.
Browse videos featuring experts across a wide range of disciplines, from personal health to business leadership to neuroscience.
Big Think’s contributors offer expert analysis of the big ideas behind the news.
Big Think’s Edge learning platform for career mentorship and professional development provides engaging and actionable courses delivered by the people who are shaping our future.
Redesigning Learning, Teaching, & Schooling
Is the effort extended to identify the problem matched by the effort to solve that problem? How many times have you seen an institution devote extraordinary efforts to identify a problem yet do little or nothing to solve that problem? For example: Leaders hire experts to figure out the ...
Are you planning for this week or this year? Are you planning for this year or next year? If you are meeting the needs of students today but not keeping an eye on what the world may be in the near future, you may in effect be preparing students for your real past and not their real world ...
Cake is good. Chocolate cake is better. Chocolate cake with creamy chocolate frosting is even better. Chocolate cake with creamy chocolate frosting and walnuts is great, but getting rich. Chocolate cake with creamy chocolate frosting and walnuts with whipped cream is still yummy, but it ...
The summer is in full swing. School leaders around the country had big plans for this summer. Many walked into June saying, "This is the summer that I will do X for my school." How is that working out? Ok, so many of us had big hopes and dreams for the summer but those may be faltering or ...
I just finished reading "Leading technology-rich schools: Award-winning models for success" written by Barbara B. Levin and Lynne Schrum. This is a great book for those wanting concrete examples of schools that get technology leadership. The authors highlight eight schools that are led by top-notch ...
Summer is in full swing. For students it is a time to relax, play in the sandbox, and stay up late. For teachers it is a time to catch up on house projects, catch up with friends, travel, plan for the next academic year, or even work toward an additional degree. For school leaders, this can be a ...
I was raised to honor our military. One of my grandfathers was a Marine sergeant during World War II. The other was an Army lifer who served in three wars and retired at the rank of colonel. My dad would have joined up in the 1960s but he had a heart murmur that prevented him from serving. I spent ...
The open access movement has come to academic journals in full force. The debate has recently been invigorate by governments moving to requiring publicly funded research to be published in open access journals. This concept has been going around the US legal circles for years too. The point of ...
Imagine that someone offered you something and said, "This might give you a short-term performance boost. If it does, we're not sure how long the effect will last but we know it will diminish over time. The boost might be just a year or two and it's all but certain that it won't last more than ...
What trait will serve you the most as a school leader? There is no shortage of lists extolling the most important knowledge, skills, and abilities that school leaders should hold. Twenty years ago SEDL suggested that the following six traits were key for leaders to possess in order to facilitate ...
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Researchers in the field of school technology leadership are focused on how technology changes education (for better or worse) and how leaders can ameliorate those changes. With the exception of the field of information and communication technology for development (ICT4D) that is focused ...
[Warning: Long post ahead] Yesterday I took the ACT college entrance exam for the first time. At age 44. It all started with Ira Socol's blog post, which argued that if politicians think that the standardized tests they are espousing are so important, they had better be able to pass those ...
As a Director for the Center for the Advanced Study of Technology Leadership in Education (CASTLE), I am often asked, what are some must-have tools for school administrators? Well, here are my favorites in no particular order. Dropbox. Online storage is a must for any busy administrator. You no ...
One of my favorite books on leadership is The Future of Management by Gary Hamel. If you haven’t read it, I encourage you to do so. You can read my book review but the essential premise is that current management models, which are centered on control and efficiency, are extremely ill-suited for an ...
This past week, John Nash (fellow author of Education Recoded) and I have had the pleasure of presenting to faculty and students at the University of Malaya in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. We have been talking about the impact technology has on education and the dire need for technology leadership. I ...