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Technology impacts on education From the abacus to the Apple Mac, technology has constantly changed the way we learn.In equal measure, the needs of education have provided the driving force behind some of our most significant technological innovations.BBC World Service programme Digital Planet, explored three of the many unique initiatives in education technology.

"Unskilled manual laborers have felt the pressure of automation for a long time - but, increasingly, they're not alone. The last few years have been a bonanza of advances in artificial intelligence. As our software gets smarter, it can tackle harder problems, which means white-collar and pink-collar workers are at risk as well. Here are eight jobs expected to be automated (partially or entirely) in the coming decades. Call Center Employees call-center Telemarketing used to happen in a crowded call center, with a group of representatives cold-calling hundreds of prospects every day. Of those, maybe a few dozen could be persuaded to buy the product in question. Today, the idea is largely the same, but the methods are far more efficient. Many of today's telemarketers are not human. In some cases, as you've probably experienced, there's nothing but a recording on the other end of the line. It may prompt you to "press '1' for more information," but nothing you say has any impact on the call - and, usually, that's clear to you. But in other cases, you may get a sales call and have no idea that you're actually speaking to a computer. Everything you say gets an appropriate response - the voice may even laugh. How is that possible? Well, in some cases, there is a human being on the other side, and they're just pressing buttons on a keyboard to walk you through a pre-recorded but highly interactive marketing pitch. It's a more practical version of those funny soundboards that used to be all the rage for prank calls. Using soundboard-assisted calling - regardless of what it says about the state of human interaction - has the potential to make individual call center employees far more productive: in some cases, a single worker will run two or even three calls at the same time. In the not too distant future, computers will be able to man the phones by themselves. At the intersection of big data, artificial intelligence, and advanced

The need for schools to prepare for 21st century learning was top of the agenda at this year's BETT conference.They must embrace mobile technologies, games, podcasts and social networking, according to leading educationalist Professor Stephen Heppell.Schools should also break away from traditional classroom and curriculum models, he argued.The gap between those schools embracing technology and those not is getting bigger, he said.Prof Heppell was speaking to delegates at BETT, the world's biggest educational technology show.

"Second, there is the question of how we see ourselves. Human nature is a baggy, capacious concept, and one that technology has altered and extended throughout history. Digital technologies challenge us once again to ask what place we occupy in the universe: what it means to be creatures of language, self-awareness and rationality."

"While it's still a popular choice to allege that technology is putting human beings out of work, a study by Deloitte based on 140 years of data seems to prove otherwise. Automation, robotics and the simple fact that IT is faster, better connected and capable of massive amounts of analytics and storage means technology has often been held responsible for replacing the roles of people, but census data stretching back to 1871 begs to differ."

"It seems highly likely that competition between the various companies developing these technologies will produce practical, self-driving trucks within the next five to 10 years. And once the technology is proven, the incentive to adopt it will be powerful: in the US alone, large trucks are involved in about 350,000 crashes a year, resulting in nearly 4,000 fatalities. Virtually all of these incidents can be traced to human error. The potential savings in lives, property damage and exposure to liability will eventually become irresistible. There's only one problem: truck driving is one of the most common occupations in the US. "

"Facebook is considering incorporating most of its 1 billion-plus members' profile photos into its growing facial recognition database, expanding the scope of the social network's controversial technology. The possible move, which Facebook revealed in an update to its data use policy on Thursday, is intended to improve the performance of its "tag suggest" feature. The feature uses facial recognition technology to speed up the process of labelling or "tagging" friends and acquaintances who appear in photos posted on the network"

"By shaping the menus we pick from, technology hijacks the way we perceive our choices and replaces them with new ones. But the closer we pay attention to the options we're given, the more we'll notice when they don't actually align with our true needs."

"Among six to seven year olds, who have grown up with YouTube, Spotify music streaming and the BBC iPlayer, the average DQ (digital quotient) score was 98, higher than for those aged between 45 and 49, who scored an average of 96. Digital understanding peaks between 14 and 15, with a DQ of 113 - and then drops gradually throughout adulthood, before falling rapidly in old age."

"The baby automaton joins a growing list of companion robots, such as the upcoming Jibo - designed by robotics experts at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and resembling a swivelling lamp - and Paro, a robot baby seal marketed by Japanese company Intelligent System as a therapeutic machine to soothe elderly dementia sufferers. Around a quarter of Japan's population is over 65 with a dearth of care workers putting a strain on social services."

"Anyone who has driven a car through an unfamiliar place can attest to how easy it is to let GPS do all the work. That GPS can have a transformative effect on a society is undeniable. We have come to depend on a technology that, in theory, makes it impossible to get lost. But not only are we still getting lost, we may actually be losing a part of ourselves."

Every technological impact has a positive and negative side, apparently.

"But what about evolution through 'unnatural selection', as National Geographic puts it. It seems that our natural, biological evolution simply cannot keep pace with the dizzying array of human enhancing technologies that emerged, and have shaped how we think, and our physical capacities."

"AI is already here. This isn't some future, theoretical technology we are working on. AI machines are already among us. Take for example Microsoft's recent security robot demonstration. Called the K5, these autonomous machines stand 5 feet tall, weigh 300 pounds, and are equipped with HD cameras, sensors, alarms, Wi-Fi and - you guessed it - artificial intelligence. These machines have been programmed to recognize if something is out of place, like an injured employee or a potential trespasser. And as technology improves, the K5 will become more capable of recognizing even smaller discrepancies than humans can."

"If you're a student and looking to establish yourself in a field of study that has a bright future in the world of high technology, then you'll need the mindset of a futurist. Understanding the direction of technology will help you decide how you want to position yourself to succeed, and figure out exactly what you need to study to get there."

"First, lucrative state contracts are given to private corporations to build and deploy policing technologies that surveil and manage target groups. Then, using the vast amounts of biometric and social media data extracted from those groups, the private companies improve their technologies and sell retail versions of them to other states and institutions, such as schools. Finally, all this turns the target groups into a ready source of cheap labor - either through direct coercion or indirectly through stigma."

Great article - that gets to the heart of the ITGS syllabus...