Romer and APLIA for Technology-enabled Teaching 27.0

Over a bowl of noodles, a teacher-entrepreneur friend said, “Your blog does not have enough posts on technology.” Then he went on a rant – which I have noticed he reserves for friends – about why technology is important. Looking at the past 26 posts, I am saddened that, indeed, there is not much about hard technology (4 from 26 posts).

From Post #1, here’s how I defined innovation for SYNTHESiST:

Innovation, … is not just about change. It is a process of creating, diffusing and applying knowledge … The Innovator stands between the Scientist and the Entrepreneur. And the final test – the good innovation should add to the net and new economic wealth, the Total Factor Productivity, of the country …

The choice of posts I think reflects my own bias on where to get the most impact from new thought-action in the Philippines. (See next Post #28 for a fuller discussion).

To give my friend his due, I will start to scan the world for technology and pick opportunities. From Post #10, this is an application of an opportunity-seeking technique – scan-and-acquire/adapt – for innovative, technology-based entrepreneurship ideal for follower nations. These new opportunities will be published under Innovation News & Stories.

I will leave you, esteemed visitor, to poke and prod and maybe acquire-or-adapt to match the needs of our poorer situation.

To get started for SYNTHESiST’s target community of educators, I choose a site that is a benchmark for technology-enabled teaching. I am a silent fan of its founder (not so silent, hence). He is an innovator who started the venture – in textbook fashion – finding a fix for a typical teacher’s irritant, students who do not do their homework. More so, I am a fan of Paul Romer because of his leadership on the economics of innovation process research.

I predict Professor Romer to win the Nobel Prize for economics for work on endogenous technological change (1990) in the next year or so. He will win the award not only because he adapted the mathematical tools of topology to extend Economics into the previously known but unexplorable territory of technical progress, Solow’s residual. In pulling in this externality to the body of economic science, the good Professor initiated a revolution in ideas. In a way, APLIA is an application of his reasearch.

Please link to APLIA here into Professor Romer’s post. Please feel free to explore the site by clicking Home from there. Being a teachers’ teacher, I am sure it will be Professor Romer’s pleasure.