Group items tagged

"We have always struggled to envision the future, often superimposing new technology over our current views. Though the creators of the Jetsons did not have the constraints of standardized tests, limited budgets, or even gravity, their schools closely resembled those of the 1960s -- which, in many ways, still look like those of today. The challenge of imagining the future of learning can seem daunting. However, snapshots already exist. We just need to look beyond our current classrooms to identify some of the key tenets for our learning environments of the future."

"Ever wonder why Google is installing extremely fast gigabit internet infrastructure when the average person needs 200x less speed? It is because of the future of the Internet of Things. In less than 10 years, the internet will not just be for your phone or laptop, everything will be online. I'm talking about your car, fridge, tv, blender, air conditioner, front door, and even your wallet. This inevitable future is why google is starting today with affordable gigabit internet. This new wave of device overload will open up revenue and advertising streams to a whole new level."

"The vision of a modern education built around personalized learning is not new, but it is definitely tantalizing. Neal Stephenson's novel The Diamond Age (Spectra, 1995) shares a vision of personalized learning in the future via an interactive book that possesses a conversational interface (CI) and "pseudo-intelligence," a kind of artificial intelligence (AI) that is inferior to human intelligence. It's likely that we'll see decent conversational interfaces within the next decade, and certainly applications like Google Voice are moving us much closer to this reality. AI that is capable of directing the learning needs of a human will take much longer, developing in the next 20-50 years, but we can't wait that long for the technology to catch up with education. The need for personalized learning exists in the here and now. So how does one bridge this vision of the future with the realities of the present?"

"WHILE education experts across Australia grapple with Gonski, high school graduates thinking of a career in teaching ought to think again - because in the future the traditional role may be gone-ski. Instead, tutoring is tipped to take on a very different form."

"I want the people who will help shape our society in the future to understand the technology that will help shape our society in the future. If this is going to happen, then we need to reverse the trend that is seeing digital illiteracy exponentially increase. We need to act together, as parents, as teachers, as policy makers. Let's build a generation of hackers. Who's with me?"

"A new Iowa Future video, "Iowa, Did You Know?," highlights the drastic changes occurring in Iowa and the world, and shows that schools are struggling to keep up in today's dynamic new global environment. The video premiered at this week's School Administrators of Iowa Conference. This fast-paced video emphasizes the magnitude of the challenges ahead, the need for Iowans to support the changes that schools must make if our learners are to be career, college, and citizenship ready, and the imperative to do this now, rather than later."

"One of the things I have been writing about and have tried to make clear over the past few months is that work as we know it is dead and that the only way forward is to challenge convention around how we work, how we lead, and how we build our companies. Employees which were once thought of expendable cogs are the most valuable asset that any organization has. However, the employee from a decade ago isn't the same as the employee who we are starting to see today. To help show that I wanted to share an image from my upcoming book which depicts how employees are evolving. It's an easy way to see the past vs the future."

"The idea of students sitting in front of PCs learning how to use Word is as dead as the proverbial dead parrot. It is already an antiquated model of learning - like chalk or fountain pens with ink-wells; it has a whiff of the twentieth century about it, rather than preparing our students for the future. Whilst the DfE dithers about what they should do with technology (Mr Gove clearly wants to reboot the chalk and talk bygone age), schools are left with a rapidly changing world, where budgets are at a premium and ICT often stretches what budgets now allow. All the while, students are learning on their iPads, Android tablets and smart phones, writing more in texts and tweets daily than in their collective writing experience during the school week. We aren't harnessing this expertise, never mind guiding it to a place of higher learning!"

Steve Wheeler's slides from an invited speech given to the Technology in Higher Education Conference, National Convention Centre, Doha, Qatar. 16 April, 2013.

Online Colleges has posted an interesting new infographic that looks at the connection between apps and education. The chart, which we've included here, suggests that the use of smartphones and tablets will only increase in the future, which really shouldn't come as a surprise.

"According to Andreas Schleicher, there is no evidence from the PISA data yet of a consistent relationship between the use of education technology and superior student performance.  That, however, certainly does not mean that no such relationship will exist in the future, just that it hasn't happened yet, at least not at the scale required to show up in the PISA surveys. "

"Vannevar Bush foreshadowed the impact that such technology would have on our contemporary lives. By doing so, Bush inspired critical aspects of current online tools, including the hyperlink and the World Wide Web. Bush's vision directly influenced researchers to create digital technology we nowadays consider commonplace. Today's equivalent of Bush's breakthrough is just as radical, except it's far beyond the conceptual stage and is already in extensive development. This technology is termed "Augmented Reality" (AR). AR has the potential to act as a harbinger of future hi-tech transformations whilst irrevocably altering the basic nature of everyday life."

Do you know what technology you'll be using in the classroom 5 years from now? What about 10 years from now? A new visualization may be able to help.

Education today thus faces several critical gaps: * Between the world that young people experience outside the classroom and the world within * Between the skills that students learn in school and those they will need later in life * Between those who have access to high-quality education and tools and those who do not It is increasingly an accepted truth that education systems must evolve to meet the needs of the students and societies they serve, changing their mission from knowledge transmission to preparation for future learning

"In straight forward business terms I see the growth and adoption of cloud following a traditional bell curve between the years 2010 and 2020. We are in year two now, and I would guess that between five and ten percent of applications in use in enterprises are cloud based (typically CRM, email, collaboration applications) and that about fifty percent of businesses are trying cloud to some degree. By 2015, I reckon fifty percent of all applications in use will be cloud based and ninety percent of all firms will have some cloud exposure. By 2020, I think we are talking about one hundred percent in terms of firms and ninety-five percent of working applications being cloud based."

"Twitter seems to be here to stay. As one of the most popular ways for teachers, students, and the general public to communicate, it's becoming a must-have tool in almost every teacher's toolbox. However, numerous recent studies have shown that education in general has been slow to adopt social media. In an effort to speed up this adoption process, below you'll find a boatload of resources on the past, present, and future of Twitter in education as well as some helpful guides to using the tool in the classroom. This guide is by no means exhaustive and is meant to be added to on a regular basis. To do that, Edudemic needs your help. Just share your favorite resource(s) on the Edudemic Facebook page and it'll get added to this Ultimate Guide."

This series from Mashable has a number of posts looking at the world of search and how it is/will develop.

Sir Ken Robinson and Joel Klein discuss the future of education in this video from The Economist. The permalink is http://ideas.economist.com/