“OK students, boot up
your hololens projections and get ready to share with the class. The topic for
the project was “Colonizing a Comet”. As you know, the recent news of the
nanomanufacturing being conducted by our team on Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko was very inspiring! I look forward to seeing what
you’ve created.”
Sound far fetched? In the next 30 years, we are going to see
advances in technology that will dramatically transform education all over the
globe - how content is created, how it is shared, how it is archived and the
level of impact it has. The evolution of learning models will advance society,
culture and business in totally unimagined ways.
Tech advances taking place daily are changing how people
interact not only in educational settings but much more broadly - how they
share ideas, how they create, how businesses are run, how children play. Our
grandchildren and great grandchildren will be learning in a very different
environment over the course of the coming decades.
The next few years
As forward thinkers like John Seely Brown have already described,
learning no longer occurs only in a “school” setting but rather all the time
everywhere in today’s global digital village. Traditional educational settings
are but one node on the broader ecosystem of learning environments where this
process - writ large - takes place.
All learning interaction can now have a digital component.
The idea of a classroom being a fixed place is outdated and arcane. While there
will always be physical locations whose main purpose is to provide a setting
for human interaction based on idea exchange and dialogue, the days of the
historical classroom are being replaced by the global digital agora.
As technology makes geography history, students are no
longer limited by what they can learn in a physical space. Using various tools
that simulate and expand real world interaction - augmented reality,
holographic projections, 3D TV, virtual worlds and others yet to be invented -
learners are increasingly able to find knowledge across an ever expanding
universe of resources that are form-factor and location agnostic. Looking for a
15th illuminated manuscript or an Instagram photo from the ISS, a Neolithic
cave painting in Indonesia or the Pope’s latest Tweet? It’s all available 24/7
on almost any device. And the amount of information being created and made
available is growing at a staggering pace.
near term: what to look for...
Mobile to wearables
Where laptop computers and tablets once held sway, we are
seeing a dramatic shift toward mobile and wearable technologies. Smart watches
can connect devices and facilitate capture and transfer of information. The
continually decreasing viscosity of data makes learning from non-traditional tech
devices much more viable. A range of info can be sent to and from wearable
devices - perhaps you might take a course remotely with your watch as one of
the tools you use to interact with the information and the students and
teachers. Video conferencing on a wearable is not far off.
Eventually we will see smart wearables that project 3D
images - either above the device or onto a nearby surface. For certain use
cases and content areas, this will be an ideal way to share and learn. Think of
a mechanic in a tight spot under a vehicle having the schematic of a wiring
harness projected holographically out of his watch or headset or wrench.
Ultra hi def mobile video
More and more educational settings are taking advantage of
TelePresence or video conferencing capabilities. As this solution gets simpler,
more stable and less expensive, tools like Skype, FaceTime and Google Hangouts
allow video interaction around the globe in real time at basically no cost.
“Come on everyone, sit
down on the blankets here in the yurt and turn on the screen - Professor Smith
from MIT is sending video from his handheld to teach us how Mongols conquered all of China and established the Yuan Dynasty over 800 years ago.”
MOOCs/SPOCs
MOOCs
(massively open online courses) and SPOCs (small private online courses) are
already transforming the way learning is conducted. Ever since Sebastian Thrun,
a Stanford professor, offered a free course on Artificial Intelligence in 2011
and over 160K people signed up, the idea has been taken up by the likes of
Harvard, MIT and Yale. Not to mention the fact that major corporate users
including Microsoft and LinkedIn are exploring this powerful model in private
sector settings.
This new model is making significant inroads into how
education is delivered on a massive scale to interested learners on the
increasingly borderless and flattened planet, on any device.
Students that would never have been able to connect to the
smartest teachers in the world due to lack of funding, inability to travel or
other reasons, can now experience and learn from the best - by logging in from
almost anywhere.
What’s ahead...and way ahead
Implantable/ingestable electronics
Millennial and digital natives - people who
never took a breath without the Internet being available - will be early
adopters when it comes to this new family of electronics.
People are already having chips put under their skin,
similar to what is done with dogs. But this new breed will be two way and
synchronous, providing real-time connectivity. Think of it as Bluetooth for
your forearm. Information will be loaded into your cerebral cortex from
transmitting devices attached to data sources - all pre-selected by the user.
We will also see ingestible devices - tiny, pill-shaped
nanomachines - that are swallowed or injected in order to generate specific
learning experiences. Want to see how it felt to be in Shackleton’s
team when they were trapped in the ice in the Antarctic in 1915?
Swallow the pill containing the neuroelectric data and you can experience that
specific historical event, react to it and gain insight and perspective never
before possible.
“OK class, here is today’s learning tablet - and a glass of
water to help you swallow it. Get ready to feel cold - we are going to the
Antarctic for an hour!. The effect will wear off by the time you are ready to
go home.”
Augmented and additive reality
Augmented reality will become a standard for creating and
sharing blended, partially immersive learning experiences. A class will put on
augmented reality headsets and have a *learning journey* together.
The Microsoft HoloLens is setting the stage for
this. When ready for prime time, this headset-based device will allow users to
create 3D objects holographically and then 3D print them for further study.
Gone are the renditions of the solar system created from painted foam balls stuck
together with pipe cleaners. You will 3D print all the planets at whatever
scale you like and then walk around them and then and climb over them.
These devices overlay data, images and video onto what
people are seeing in the real world. Information about objects will appear
simply by focusing on them. Historical data on a building will be listed when
you look at it - the year it was built, name of the architect, socio-historical
context. Pre-designed environments based on specific topics will allow teacher
and students to walk through a medieval castle or stroll along the Great Wall
as it was being built. All the while providing relevant information, directed
by the learner.
Immersive and virtual reality
The increasing power and availability of virtual reality
devices like Oculus
Rift, Samsung Gear VR and Google
Cardboard will allow learning environments that are completely
immersive and richly experiential in ways that were never before possible.
Current uses are pretty crude - like riding on a Ferris
Wheel or sliding over a cliff into the sea. But more and more real world
learning use cases are being developed. A doctor will be able to walk through a
virtual human body followed by new surgeons, describing what musculature to be
sensitive to and what blood vessels to avoid in order to conduct a successful
operation.
Teachers will take students back in time to visit an
historic event. Educational content will be created to be experiential and
collaborative, not one to many.
“Everyone put on your
personal virtual reality headset and strap into your framework. Get ready to
follow me - we are heading to 13th Century England to meet King John at
Runnymede and watch him sign the Magna Carta. Careful - don’t step in the horse
poop!”
neural science and what to learn
Advances in neuroscience and nanotech will allow learners to
connect directly to their physiology/neural wiring.
The capability will exist to conduct analysis on current and
future in-demand skills across the globe - analyzing situations to identify
gaps and opportunities driven by economic, cultural, political and social
trends.
Then, projecting your own skills portfolio onto these
models, you receive insight into how your current and anticipated skills will
translate to real world roles over the course of a 100+ year lifespan.
“This week-end, I am
conducting my quarterly Antenna Analysis. After entering data from my current
TalentScan showing my skills and proclivities, I’ll map this to the model of
trending data showing where the planet is heading from a social, political,
cultural and business standpoint. The result will be a mapping report that
identifies any gaps in my current skills and ones I will need to acquire to be
successful in the ever morphing socio-business landscape.”
bigger picture impact
Get ready for new tech approaches to redefine learning in
ways that will look like magic to those of us sitting here in 2015. Your
grandchildren will using tools and accessing information in ways and on a scale
we can hardly imagine. Technologies that don't exist today will be commonplace
in 2050.
These technology breakthroughs will transform how
information is distributed but more importantly will accelerate the progress of
humankind. These exciting advances will foster creativity, drive innovation and
facilitate societal and cultural progress.
Learn on!
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