Well it is time that we all take a look at how education will be shaped in the future not only from technology, but also on how we are going use what we learn and learn what we use.
I keep hitting at education from a continuous learning perspective and to that effect, the learning world is spewed with many supporting evidence in many different ways. So, let me leave it at that.
Instead, let me try to present you the education in 21st century on how it should be. Since the world is becoming smaller and smaller day by day, it is foolish to assume that what we do here is going to be novel and a breakthrough phenomenon that will conquer the world. All novelty will be duplicated very quickly around the world and with no loyalty factor as part of the employment to innovate, the future of employees and employers and everything else depends on who poach from whom and at what price.
All these in the end will seem insignificant as the learning stops and the usability of the products decline. Copycats swarm the market with low quality products and sometimes high quality ones confuse the customer to which they should buy.
Hence the education should begin not with just mathematics or science, but also on how to find the information that we need without suspecting the authenticity of the information. With technology taking over the publication of books, a media that once was hard to copy and to distribute, the dissemination of misinformation is rapid and catastrophic.
One way to avoid this trap is to equip the new learners with recognition tools for good information and lean on books that serve as the guide to finding that information – from wherever they are.
From what we can observe today, we can safely see that the change has become rapid and relentless. Education has become thin and wide. Time and attention needed to assimilate the information has become limited and diffused. When we are at the cross roads with global connectivity providing exciting opportunities while providing the risks of failure constant and ongoing, it is better that we equip our future generation with a different kind of education than what we went through.
While social networks like Facebook and professional networks like LinkedIn have defined the ways in which we connect in the 21st century, the 24×7 world has also changed with follow me anywhere and anytime apps like Twitter and Google Play on smart phones for information dissemination. Learning has taken on a newer meaning as Google-ing. Searching for information has taken on newer concepts with tags and labeling.
While we are aware of all these things, we are not still there to reshape the foundation of the learning system that starts with elementary schools. Technologies are being adapted at all levels of these traditional schooling systems, but they are at best haphazard and unconnected. Efforts are being made to wrap education as common core just to facilitate bench marking of education levels attained easier to understand and easier to manage.
While we might be heading in the right direction, the efforts are forgetting the impact of rapid and relentless changes that are happening outside the education system and has no strategy to address them on how to embrace. Many business models are being adopted as a solution or a strategy but they are nowhere near achieving a completion with 360 degree view of the same.
While I have been pushing through all that with my Circle of Learning concepts and QTIME learning framework, I have not been much successful. Having taken this up at national levels, college levels and school levels, I still see the administrators grappling at the ideas presented to relate them to what they are doing.
However, I say that they will fail if they do it the way they are doing now as they will fail to align simply because the knowledge that is presented as one with the COL concepts has been broken up into million processes managed by many and at many different levels and the task of bringing them under one overarching umbrella like COL is too much for them to even comprehend.
I need bigger minds to step into this fray. I need analysts and researchers to work on developing a more comprehensive frameworks that address specific industry with the deeper knowledge that only SMEs possess. I need support to start a COL foundation to get this going. But the support I am getting is akin to the effort of pushing through a concrete bunker with a match stick in my hand. I hope you realize what I am up against.
But I need to find a way, and, I will to push through that wall to make the breakthrough we need for the education in the 21st century. Keep reading my blog and contribute generously to this effort.