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David Thornburg is an award-winning futurist, author, and consultant whose clients range across the public and private sector all over the planet. His razor-sharp focus on the fast-paced world of modern computing and communication media, project-based learning, 21st century skills, and open source software has placed him in constant demand as a keynote speaker and workshop leader for schools, foundations, and governments. As a child of the October Sky, David was strongly influenced by the early work in space exploration and was the beneficiary of changes in the US educational system that promoted and developed interest in science, technology, engineering, and math (“STEM”) skills. He now is engaged in helping a new generation of students and their teachers infuse these skills through the mechanism of inquiry-driven project-based learning. His educational philosophy is based on the idea that students learn best when they are constructors of their own knowledge. He also believes that students who are taught in ways that honor their learning styles and dominant intelligences retain the native engagement with learning that they possessed when they entered school. A central theme of his work is that we must prepare students for their future, not for our past. David splits his time between the United States and Brazil. His work in Brazil also is focused on education, and he has spoken at conferences and consulted for firms and educational institutions throughout that country. |
Luncheon Keynote:
Forget About The Future: It’s The Present That Concerns Me. Preparing Students For Today’s World
For many years, Dr. Thornburg has shared visions of the future with educators around the world in the hope that this would influence educational practice. This was a mistake. We don’t need to prepare students just for some unseen and basically unknowable future; we need to prepare them for the world as it exists today. This dynamic presentation eschews the future in favor of a pragmatic view of today’s world. A world where a new class of migrant workers spans the globe working on stimulating high-tech projects on a global scale. A world where cross-disciplinary understanding is needed for success; where 87% of teens have access to primary source materials relating to their studies; where vulcanologists study volcanic eruptions on a moon of Jupiter; where national borders are transparent; where biological species from other planets are put under the microscope; where new microscopic machines are grown, not manufactured. This is not fiction, not a dream, not the future, just reality - as it exists today. By looking at the skills needed to thrive in today’s very real world, ideas relating to curriculum and pedagogy naturally emerge. Forget pie-in-the sky predictions. This presentation explores the world in a way that has implications for every educator, educational leader, and student. |
