I can't describe what this video does to me. It excites me, frustrates me, motivates me, and generally makes me want to bang my head on my desk repeatedly.

Once upon a time, there were dreams at my current job that we would be on the cutting edge of this kind of work. Not in a theoretical or developmental sense, but in a sense that we would be teaching qualified students how to leap onto these innovations, to surf them, mash them, to recognize new and creative business opportunities within them.

Instead, we struggle with whether or not our students understand us well enough to keep up with the deeply stripped down curriculum we are now working with. If we can get past the language problems, my particular area of focus seems to be getting them to plan projects and work coherently within cross-functional (cross-dysfunctional?) teams. Sometimes I tell them, "Look – I don't care if all you produce is one page of properly structured HTML … if, as a TEAM, you have accurately analyzed and assessed the client's problem, planned the project, managed the work breakdown structure throughout, and delivered on time and on budget … then you have achieved something." A recent post by Patti addresses why this particular set of skills is valuable.

Have our graduates embraced Web 2.0? No. Just don't ask them about it, please. I spent a chunk of yesterday afternoon demonstrating to a student that, yes, you can edit e-mails in g-mail. You don't have to re-type them. This is a graduate student, about to finish his course in two months. One of the complete misconceptions that is held by our administration is that "all the young people, they know all this stuff already". They don't … they really really don't.

Our institution has a long-historic fear of the vision that was present in this programme 7-8 years ago. That technology would revolutionize everything about how we do business together as human beings on this planet. This is not recognized as proper or useful curriculum, or it hasn't been for the entire time that we have fought for it. And, trust me, we have fought valiantly. One of the things I cover when I teach project management is that in order for any internal initiative to succeed, it requires top management support, even if that support comes in the form of a very loose leash.  Somehow, in trying to shoehorn the vision into a technology-resistant institution, we've lost our way.  We've been mis-marketed, mis-handled and mis-understood.

In the real world, there is a marriage between form and content as separate but enmeshed entities. This takes some critical thinking to envision and some technical savvy to adapt how this marriage can be leveraged into a revenue-generating opportunity. If we were to actually be doing this, sticking to what would have been the natural evolution of this curriculum, our graduates would not have a clear list of jobs that such a person could get. Perhaps they would start out as a web analyst or project manager or database administrator. However, strictly speaking, such graduates would create their own roles, either intrapreneurially within a larger organization, or by starting their own enterprises. This lack of direct correlation simply does not compute in the world of institutionalized curriculum. A foreign concept, that powerful marriage of critical thinking and technical skills.

We are so far away from delivering this right now, I can barely see the shore.

(For those in the know, I am coming dangerously close to saying I'm missing the bizarre but oddly successful influence of Georgette, our very own butterfly-in-a-hurricane.  I'm not – but, in truth, she did have this vision and she fought hard for it, even though her personal style made me want to slit my wrists.)

I'm hoping that we can get some momentum under new leadership. It is hard to get motivated when we've been let down so often. I hope, in 18 months, I can post a much happier, less cynical, summary of how I earn my keep and make a contribution to the welfare of the world. Stay tuned …